Bishop Martin Amos said he was pleased to be back “home” on Sept. 22 as he celebrated a farm Mass in Wayne County. The Besancon family hosted the event on their dairy farm in Smithville. Father Steve Moran, pastor of St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception Parish in Wooster, concelebrated.
The event was organized by the Catholic Commission of Wayne-Ashland-Medina, said Deacon Paul Kipfstuhl, commission director. He said the Mass was in memory of the Besancon family patriarch, Richard “Dick” Lawrence Besancon, who died at age 89 on Sept. 7.
Deacon Kipfstuhl said the liturgy also celebrated Bishop Edward Malesic’s approval for the Diocesan Social Action Office to become the fourth Ohio chapter of Catholic Rural Life, an organization that promotes Catholic life in rural America. The social action office is a ministry of Catholic Charities, Diocese of Cleveland.
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During the Mass, many of the faithful sat on hay bales in a three-sided building that housed farm equipment.
A native of the Cleveland Diocese, Bishop Amos was appointed as an auxiliary bishop of the diocese in 2001 and was assigned to serve the southern, more rural portion of the diocese – specifically Wayne, Ashland, Medina and Summit counties – a role he filled until he was named bishop of Davenport, Iowa in 2006. He served there until retiring in 2017 and returning to Cleveland.
The bishop told about 150 people who gathered for the liturgy that he was raised as a city boy in Cleveland. As a child, he was able to grow vegetables in the summer on a plot of land behind his school. It was a precursor to his later experience with farming and his years in Iowa, the bishop said.
Iowa is ranked No. 1 in the country for soybean, corn and pork production, he noted. During his time there, he was able to “sample” farm life by milking a cow and riding a combine that harvested eight rows of corn simultaneously. “It was all computerized,” he added.
“What I definitely learned over the years is that farming is not easy. It is hard work, long days, very dependent on weather and most of you wouldn’t trade it for any other profession,” Bishop Amos said.
Reflecting on the story of creation, he said, “God looked at what he had made and saw that it was good. We can almost picture God planting a fine garden.” In addition, he said one could almost see God molding humankind from clay and blowing the breath of life into their nostrils.
“But into this scene comes temptation and sin,” he said. Although we inherited original sin, we are called to a higher and better path, the bishop said.
He also pointed out that Jesus was tempted, but resisted. In one temptation, God said it was not good for man to be alone, the bishop said.
“I believe the spirit of isolationism can creep into our existence whether we live on a farm with a great distance separating us from our neighbors or in a crowded city. We can become loners where our sole concern is ourselves. We lose sensitivity to others,” he said, adding, “There is a difference between solitude and aloneness. We need solitude at times, but we can never be disconnected with each other.”
Bishop Amos connected those thoughts to regional food growing, noting food relationships are primary connections. However, the food system tends to be vertical and separates farmers and consumers. “As we make our system more circular, then farmers become as important as consumers, as grocers, as processors, as chefs. We are all involved in the cycle of food.”
He cautioned that we need to find ways to strengthen this relationship to avoid farmers and consumers from becoming isolated.
“If we justly produce, sell and distribute food in all regions of the world, we can share in the bounty and build up communities,” the bishop said.
“Food is a holy thing. It is a basic and fundamental right,” he added, noting it must be “safe, accessible and provide a fair return to the original producers.”
The Eucharist is our holy food for this feast and our journey, Bishop Amos said. And as Christ is our holy food, we also are called to be food for each other, he said, noting this was the meaning of communion. “We are one bread, one body.”
Society may not feed our spirit, but we are called to feed one another with our love, attentiveness, compassion and presence to each other, he said.
“We received Christ into our bodies so that others may eat and partake of him through us. The bread of life is broken so that we can hand on the bread of ourselves to others,” the bishop said.
He told those gathered that Jesus wants to change stony hearts into “hearts of flesh, hearts filled with love and compassion that nourish and sustain within our community, hearts converted into the bread that nourishes our souls and binds our community together.”
The bishop cautioned “all the farmers, rural townspeople, city and suburban people that we cannot isolate ourselves. We cannot cut ourselves off from each other. To be church is to travel in community, to cluster around one another and to build up our life-giving parishes and communities. Then our harvest will be great. We will be fruitful and multiply.”
After Mass, the Besancon family hosted a social and offered tours of the farm. The family owns about 900 acres, according to Brent Besancon. They have about 300 milk cows and another 300 replacement cows, he said.
The family has operated the farm in Smithville for about 60 years.