Angelus News | May 17, 2024 | Vol. 9 No. 10
On the cover: Emma D. and Roberto M. read during a class session at San Miguel School in Watts, one of 24 schools in lower-income areas across the Archdiocese of Los Angeles participating in the new Solidarity Schools initiative. On Page 10, Theresa Cisneros examines the program’s ambitious goals and talks to participants who describe its early success in creating a ‘culture of literacy’ among disadvantaged students.
On the cover: Emma D. and Roberto M. read during a class session at San Miguel School in Watts, one of 24 schools in lower-income areas across the Archdiocese of Los Angeles participating in the new Solidarity Schools initiative. On Page 10, Theresa Cisneros examines the program’s ambitious goals and talks to participants who describe its early success in creating a ‘culture of literacy’ among disadvantaged students.
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Then law enforcement showed up<br />
to investigate the group’s leader for<br />
financial fraud, he said. Disillusioned,<br />
Cardona sought other paths to God, including<br />
the Hare Krishnas and Russian<br />
Orthodox Christianity. He kept moving<br />
east — geographically and spiritually.<br />
Enthralled by encounters with Hindu<br />
gurus, he followed them. As a former<br />
evangelical pastor, his testimony was<br />
in demand. He moved to England,<br />
becoming a globe-trotting guru who<br />
led Christians into Hinduism. He<br />
spent seven years in Hong Kong before<br />
settling in India in 2013.<br />
Five years later, he said, Jesus called<br />
him, showing him his sins so graphically<br />
that Cardona wept for three days<br />
and asked God why he didn’t just let<br />
him die.<br />
He heard a voice in his heart reply,<br />
“It’s because I love you.”<br />
That is when, Cardona said, Jesus told<br />
him to go west and serve the poor.<br />
Back in Pennsylvania, he fell in with<br />
missionaries who lived in a motorhome,<br />
traveling with them across the<br />
south. But when he was sent to meet<br />
their leader in Australia, he realized he<br />
had joined another corrupt ministry.<br />
Flat broke, Cardona contacted a<br />
former Hindu disciple in Hong Kong,<br />
who booked him a flight to Los Angeles.<br />
“I didn’t have a penny in any currency<br />
and a Mexican cleaning lady gave me<br />
bus fare to come downtown so I could<br />
sign up for food stamps,” he said.<br />
A street preacher directed him to the<br />
Emmanuel Baptist Rescue Mission,<br />
which is run by some of its residents.<br />
Cardona served as director until his<br />
health declined.<br />
He began to reread the early Church<br />
Fathers, who he had encountered decades<br />
earlier in Russian Orthodoxy. But<br />
this time he was drawn west. What he<br />
read made him love and trust in Mary<br />
and long for the Eucharist.<br />
“I found myself awash in God’s love<br />
and [Mary’s] sweet love and assurance.<br />
That was when I knew I had to become<br />
Catholic,” he said.<br />
— Ann Rodgers<br />
did the renunciation of sin. The west is the last place where<br />
the light of the sun arrives, so it’s a place of darkness. So,<br />
renouncing sin is renouncing the darkness.<br />
Then I walked to the other side and they turned around<br />
and faced toward the east (toward me) to profess their faith,<br />
because east is the source of light, where the sun rises. The<br />
rising sun symbolizes Christ rising from the dead, dispelling<br />
the darkness of sin and death. The east is also symbolic of<br />
paradise, where God created man and woman. The garden,<br />
located in the east, symbolizes the Christian journey from<br />
this world to the light of God’s kingdom.<br />
Another detail: This year, with help from local communities<br />
of the Neocatechumenal Way, we had an immersion<br />
baptismal font built in front of the regular font at St. Mary’s<br />
Cathedral here in San Francisco. On the sides there are icons<br />
painted in the style of Kiko Argüello, a Spanish artist who<br />
started the Neocatechumenal Way.<br />
So, after professing their faith, the catechumens climbed<br />
a stepladder to enter the baptismal font from the west side.<br />
They went three steps down into the water and were immersed<br />
three times, symbolizing the three days Christ spent<br />
in the tomb. Then they walked three steps back up, symbolizing<br />
their being united with Christ in his resurrection.<br />
St. Cyril of Jerusalem spoke about these signs, telling Christians<br />
that “when you were immersed in the water it was like<br />
night for you and you could not see; but when you rose again<br />
it was like coming into broad daylight. In the same instant<br />
you died and were born again; the saving water was both your<br />
tomb and your mother.”<br />
You had <strong>17</strong> adult baptisms at this year’s vigil. For the sake<br />
of time, why not just pour a little water on their foreheads,<br />
if the sacrament is still valid?<br />
Validity is a pretty low bar to determine how we celebrate<br />
the sacraments. Think of a married couple celebrating their<br />
wedding anniversary: You can take your wife to McDonald’s,<br />
or you can have a special candlelight dinner. They’re both<br />
meals, ways to mark your anniversary. But which one is really<br />
proper to the occasion?<br />
Baptism is the door to all of the other sacraments. Yes, it’s a<br />
lot of heavy lifting to do a baptism by immersion — especially<br />
with the number of adults this year — but it’s very profound.<br />
The meaning of the sacrament is conveyed so much<br />
more forcefully and convincingly.<br />
A couple of my traditionally minded friends were kind of<br />
suspicious about this idea of baptism by immersion. But what<br />
they saw at the Easter Vigil changed their minds, because<br />
they saw what it conveys and that it’s authentically within our<br />
tradition. In fact, we know from his writings that this was how<br />
baptisms were done in St. Cyril’s time.<br />
Your diocese, like many others around the country, saw<br />
a rise in adult baptisms this year. What do you think is<br />
behind it?<br />
A lot of what I hear is anecdotal, but do I know that we’ve<br />
been emphasizing that faith has to be a personal encounter.<br />
I recently had dinner with FOCUS missionaries serving<br />
here at San Francisco State University. And they’ll do things<br />
like play frisbee on the lawn and the students will come over<br />
and talk to them, and are surprised that they are Catholic<br />
missionaries.<br />
I would imagine the whole COVID-19 experience was part<br />
of it, too: People realized that we need in-person community,<br />
that virtual doesn’t work.<br />
I also wonder whether everything going on in society — the<br />
dehumanization, the different ideologies, the role of social<br />
media — kind of aggravates the sense of isolation, which<br />
leads to depression and anxiety. People are realizing that<br />
there must be a better way, and that it goes beyond this idea<br />
of being spiritual but not religious: They realize spirituality<br />
has to be within the context of a community of faith. My gut<br />
feeling is that these things have something to do with it.<br />
Pablo Kay is the editor-in-chief of <strong>Angelus</strong>.<br />
<strong>May</strong> <strong>17</strong>, <strong>2024</strong> • ANGELUS • 19