Presenting our annual Christmas message is Father Shay Auerbach, a Jesuit priest who has been serving Richmond’s Catholic parish of Sacred Heart since 2007. He has been a Jesuit for 32 years and a priest for 21. In his own words from a May 2020 article in the Hawaii Catholic Herald: 

I was attracted to the Jesuits because of their — believe it or not — humility. Ignatius Loyola, our founder insisted that God was laboring in all things, for our good. That meant concretely in every event, circumstance, and in all peoples. Growing up in Hawaii where we knew that Catholicism was a foreign import, I was amazed how Jesuits learned from the peoples they served, in China becoming respected scholars, and in what is now Paraguay assisting indigenous Guarani inhabitants shape a culture that was at once deeply Christian and authentically Guarani. 

Sometimes my dad would take me to early morning Mass at the old St. Francis Hospital chapel. In those early morning moments, night gone, but not yet day, I could feel God’s presence. I remember as well we would visit great aunts, Sister Mary Lucy and Sister Elizabeth Ah Fook, at the Sacred Hearts Convent in Kaimuki. What for me was an intermittent awareness and experience of God’s presence was for them a way of life. 

After college and graduate school at Georgetown, I entered the Society of Jesus in 1988. After a long formation — which a Jesuit professor told us we had so that once we got ordained we wouldn’t get up in front of God’s people and say stupid things — I was ordained and have worked primarily with immigrants from Mexico and Central America. 

I have been at my parish of Sacred Heart in Richmond, Virginia, since 2007. It is a wonderful parish, over 90% Spanish-speaking yet where everyone feels welcome and included. Working with this community we have learned much from the people themselves and “built church” with them. I would like to think that this is what my Jesuit forebearers did in places like Paraguay. Learning from them has taken me to many of their hometowns and villages to learn more about them. 

There is a woman from our parish whose family is in a very rough spot including a daughter with cancer. Profoundly upset, she reflected, “I just wanted to give up. I felt I had nothing to hold on to anymore, and then I listened to one of the reflections on our parish YouTube channel. That brought me back to life and now I am more than ready to face any challenge, eagerly.” 

God is everywhere and in everything. We just have to be humble enough to let things go and grasp his hand.