Susan B. Reynolds Receives the Alumni Distinguished Service Award

On Thursday April 13 the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry hosted their fourth annual Daniel J. Harrington, S. J. Lecture and awarded the Alumni Distinguished Service Award to Susan Bigelow Reynolds. Reynolds is an Assistant Professor of Catholic Studies at Emory University. Her talk, titled “Basements, Potlucks, and the Orange Line: Listening for God in an Urban Parish,” told stories of her time serving at Saint Mary of the Angels Parish in Roxbury, Massachusetts. 

Reynolds began her lecture with pictures of a Good Friday service she attended in Matamoros, Mexico this year. It depicted the priest in the prostrate position at the start of the service. However, this service was not in a church, but outside after a devastating rainstorm. The priest was laying on a piece of cardboard with his mud-caked shoes facing the camera. It was in this photo that Reynolds saw the theology she hopes to accomplish, doing “theology with muddy shoes.”

Reynolds’ own story, as she continued, began with her decision to attend Boston College’s School of Theology and Ministry. Upon coming to Boston, she had the chance to find accommodations by living and helping in a parish house. This parish was Saint Mary of the Angels in Roxbury. She saw it as a unique opportunity to experience the life of a parish “from the inside out.”

The church is, as Reynolds described it, “a basement.” It was built in 1906 with the intent of building a larger upper church, which never came. However, even from its beginning, the parish was happy with its humble nature. Reynolds displayed a letter from the parish’s first pastor who likened its beginnings to the Nativity. As time went on, the Roxbury area and the parish itself began to welcome and comprise a diverse congregation. Reynolds said that the parish defied fragmentation because it made solidarity an “ecclesial virtue.”

Reynolds also noted the parish’s quick reaction to Vatican II. In 1969 it was one of the earlier parishes to form a parish council. She said that it used this council to place a “struggling parish into a place of solidarity.” One instance in which it attempted to do this was when the council voted to transfer the parish bank account to a local bank. The parish council also wrote to the Archdiocese asking for Saturday vigil Masses. It was after this letter that the Archdiocese of Boston began giving parishes the option to celebrate Saturday vigil Masses.

The parish also had an effect on the Roxbury area as well. In the 1980s and 90s, the parish saw an increase in crime and youth gangs. The pastor at the time sat down with members of the gang and the police. The teenagers said they just wanted a place to socialize. The pastor reached out to the local school and made an agreement that the gym would be open for the group once a week. With his on-the-ground method of serving his parish, the pastor was able to help the community at large.

At the end of the lecture, Reynolds asked the question, what does stability mean for a church on the move? Her answer was that a parish is not stable like a fortress, but like a train station.

When being presented with the award, Reynolds was joined by members of Saint Mary of the Angels Parish and was given the award by them.