In a Suffering City, an El Paso Priest Needed a Message of Hope
EL PASO — The Rev. Fabian Marquez had not slept much. Whenever he closed his eyes, his mind filled with the faces he saw draining of hope as they learned their relatives had been killed. His week had been a string of vigils, rosaries, memorial services and funeral planning sessions.
Still, he had another community to attend to, his congregation at El Buen Pastor, a small mission church on the outskirts of El Paso, where every weekend he presides over three Masses in Spanish and one in English and Spanish.
He was in his office, his Bible cracked open and notes splayed on his desk, trying to come up with a sermon. He had to distill the horrors the community had endured in the past week, and somehow find meaning. El Paso had not been struck merely by an episode of random mass violence. The gunman who charged into a Walmart store had a manifesto that made clear that he had a specific target: Hispanic people and immigrants, the people sitting in his pews. Fear had been added to their anguish.
Father Marquez, a Mexican-American and native son of El Paso, wrestled with what to say. It was Friday, and he had not even read the Bible verses scheduled to be the week’s readings. “I haven’t had the time,” he said. He hoped that a message offering comfort would come to him. “I always follow what the spirit tells me, and we take it from there.”
After an exhausting week, he was relying on the spirit to come through.
Father Marquez found himself drawing inspiration to the Gospel of Matthew, where Jesus is asked which is the greatest commandment.
“We need to follow the commandment of love — love God, love your neighbor,” the priest said. “This was a tragedy that came to break us and separate us, but God is inviting us to spread the love that only comes from him, and only with that are we going to be able to overcome this tragedy and this sadness.”
He let his words hang for a moment. “I’ve been playing around with that,” he added.
Father Marquez, 46, stumbled into the priesthood. He had taught third grade for several years. He served on the City Council in San Elizario, a small town outside El Paso. He had aspirations of running for the State Legislature. He had always been an observant Catholic, he said, but he became more involved in the church because he thought it would help him politically.
Instead, he said, he received a different call.
“As soon as I walked in, I heard it,” he said. “‘Leave everything and follow me. I’ll make you fishers of men.’ It was embedded in my head. It was engraved in my heart. And that never left me.”
He was the Diocese of El Paso’s first seminarian in six years, ordained in 2004. Five years ago, he was dispatched to El Buen Pastor in Sparks, one of the impoverished colonias around El Paso, where residents had fought for years for access to water, sewage and electricity services.
The community sprouted from the scrubby West Texas terrain, with the church sitting beside dusty lots with modest family houses, mobile homes and a graveyard of old eighteen-wheelers. It took years for the congregation to raise the money and build the church themselves.
In his office, Father Marquez has crosses, a small statue of Jesus and photos all over the walls, including images of him with Pope Benedict XVI and with Pope John Paul II, whom he met more than once.
He constantly collects thoughts for homilies, sometimes pausing in conversation to jot something down. He holes up in his office to prepare, looking up the verses and sketching out the points he would like to make. That said, he likes to keep it extemporaneous.
“You have to just rely that the Lord will give you the wisdom, the knowledge to say the right thing,” he said. “It feels good. It makes sense. It flows nicely. It feels connected. That’s how I interpret the spirit saying, ‘Yeah, way to go, you’re doing a good job.’”
In the hours after the shooting on Aug. 3, Father Marquez rushed to a school that had been turned into what the police called a family reunification center. Families hoping to find their relatives piled in. Before long, many got word that their loved ones were safe, in hospitals, nearby stores or at a friend’s house. As the hours went by, the number of families waiting dwindled. Eventually, 17 were left.
Father Marquez waited with them overnight and into the following morning. At around 10 a.m., he encouraged them to join him in prayer. They said the Lord’s Prayer, they offered one another peace, and he recited for them the 23rd Psalm: “The lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” At 10:30, law enforcement officials began taking families into another room, one by one. The priest sat beside them as they were told that their relative was among the 22 who had died.
“I cried with them,” Father Marquez said. “I prayed with them. I embraced them, because you cannot help but feel their pain.”
He has vowed to attend the funerals held by each of the 17 families he had prayed with. (He wrote their names on a rumpled piece of paper that, a week later, was still in his pocket.) He was also asked to preside over the funeral Mass of Raul and Maria Flores, who had been married for 60 years and who were killed together in the Walmart.
Over the past week, he helped the Flores’s children choose readings and songs for the service. He encouraged them to share stories of their parents; he had never met the couple, but he wanted his homily to reflect their lives and character. He wanted their family to feel reassured.
“Jesus is telling you, don’t let your hearts be troubled,” he said, laying out his thoughts for the sermon. “That brings me a lot of comfort, personally. What happens when you lose someone? You want to know where they are. You want to know that they’re safe. So this scripture tells them, I’m preparing a very special place for you, and when that place is ready, I’m going to come and get you.”
Lee Ann Beck, a friend of Father Marquez for 15 years, went with him to the memorial that grew in a parking lot behind the Walmart, where he led victims’ families and others in prayer.
“The people needed comfort in the chaos, and he happened to be the voice,” she said. “He has this way, he has this gift of bringing that peace. Not everyone has that.”
Still, she worried for him.
“You are the only one who has journeyed with these families,” she said she told him, raising a question about his well-being again, this time at a memorial service on Saturday night for Andre Anchondo, 23; he died with his wife, Jordan, who also was remembered at the service.
“You’re the only one who knows what that’s like — how are you?” Ms. Beck recalled asking Father Marquez.
His reply has been the same: He found solace from being with the families and in the community. “I’m doing O.K.,” she said he told her. “I’m tired. I’m sad. I’m overwhelmed at times. But doing God’s work gives me strength.”
Now, his own congregation needed him.
During the mass on Sunday, candles for each of the 22 people killed had been set before the altar.
In his homily, switching between English and Spanish, Father Marquez shared why he had not been there the weekend before, describing the time spent with the victims’ families. He pulled the list of names from his pocket. He said it had been his toughest week as a pastor.
But he said that he drew comfort from the Mass’s reading from the Gospel of Luke.
“Don’t be afraid,” Father Marquez said, standing in the aisle among the congregation. “Those are the words God gave us when we are all afraid.”
He repeated it, for his congregation, and it seemed, for himself: “You do not have to be afraid.”
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