Hope Reborn

by Tom Tracy



Army “brat” Joseph Roddy’s parents had nearly given up on him due to his addiction to hard drugs in the mid-1990s when they finally made him an offer he couldn’t refuse: go to Comunità Cenacolo or leave the family and their home altogether.
 

Comunità Cenacolo depends and lives totally on the Providence of God. The men learn to live off the land by growing their own food and caring for farm animals.

After reading about a unique Catholic residential community located outside of St. Augustine, Fla., the family express-mailed a request for a visit and Joseph entered Comunità Cenacolo America at the location of Our Lady of Hope Community shortly after. Situated on State Road 16 just west of Interstate 95, the community is part of an international organization called Comunità Cenacolo or Community of the Cenacle, founded in Italy in 1983 by a dynamic religious woman named Sister Elvira Petrozzi.

At Cenacolo, Joseph attended a three-day orientation to see if this “School of Life” could help him find God and make a lasting change through a simple but profound style of Christian daily living, which includes prayer, community living and manual work such as carpentry, welding, construction, baking, cultivating fruit and vegetable gardens, cooking and general maintenance.
 

		After living at Cenacolo for four years, Joseph Roddy remains committed to living a simple Christian life with his wife Yvonne and their two young children.
		Very few of the men have skills, such as welding, when they come to Cenacolo to live. They are taught skills for working at Cenacolo.

“When you come here it is almost like the military or living in a monastery: you get up early, say your prayers, have your breakfast, and do your work – also a form of prayer. No matter how menial the task, you do it with love and you learn to appreciate what you are doing,” said Joseph, who completed four years with the community both here and overseas. Working as a carpenter, he is now married and has two young children. He has a new set of supportive friends in the St. Augustine area and has no wish to revisit old pals from his heroine-using days.

For members of Comunità Cenacolo it is not enough to just help each other remain drug free; they challenge each other to change their lives and learn to accept that the only way to really live a good life is to live simply according to the core values of their Catholic faith.

During a normal day’s work, the members, most of whom have suffered from serious addictions of some kind, learn to respect others. They learn how to deal with others in the moment rather than just blocking them out altogether.

At the evening table, the men – most are in their early 20’s – talk about their day’s experiences. They use a journal to help them address their frustrations and failures – their accomplishments – and to appreciate the small things. The idea is to get into the habit of telling the truth about the small things and learn how to express their feelings. Then it gets easier to handle the big things that will come later with family life or job responsibilities.

“My biggest growth took place during private prayer time in front of the Blessed Sacrament,” Joseph said. “I began to realize how God is working in my life, how he has saved me many times in the past and I can see why things have happened.

Americans usually enter Comunità Cenacolo in St. Augustine. After a period of time, they will move to another house overseas – Cenacolo has 53 houses in Europe and South America. Currently, there are 10 houses for women. Comunità Cenacolo America has three houses, all located in St. Augustine. Men must be between the ages of 18 and 40 to live in the community and for women the ages range from 18 to 30. They are asked to live in Cenacolo for at least three years.

Bishop Robert J. Baker of Charleston, S.C., formerly the pastor of the Cathedral-Basilica of St. Augustine, was instrumental in bringing Comunità Cenacolo to Florida in 1994. He researched existing treatment programs in the U.S. but found nothing that had the spiritual foundation that he believed God wanted for this work of mercy and healing. After meeting Sister Elvira through a priest at the Vatican, Father Baker felt certain that Comunità Cenacolo was God’s answer to his prayers.

A visitor to Cenacolo in St. Augustine will notice that the young men conduct themselves as nearly perfect gentlemen and seem far from the stereotype of a criminal drug addict. That’s because the old street attitudes that the men arrived with are not tolerated here. The older men in Cenacolo – referring to their length of time in the School of Life, not age – gently but firmly help newcomers understand the importance of treating others as well as themselves with courtesy and respect – and to be grateful. This also comes about through the Cenacolo’s total trust in Divine Providence – believing that everything they have is a gift from God.

“We don’t buy food and we don’t make the members pay to live here, so basically we depend on God 100 percent,” said Albino Aragno, director of Comunità Cenacolo America in St. Augustine. “It is beautiful to witness the transformation in the men when they have accepted that everything they have comes from God. When we have less, we pray more. We have learned to appreciate what we have and we have learned to live without,” he said.

On a recent Sunday morning, retired St. Augustine Bishop John J. Snyder visited Comunità Cenacolo America to hear confessions, celebrate Mass and share a meal with the men. Several former members such as Joseph were in attendance with their wives and children. Bishop Snyder calls Comunità Cenacolo one of the best-kept secrets in St. Augustine. He has seen young men whom he thought would never last go on to stay several years, living part of the time in one of the houses overseas.

“It is a demanding program, with two strong faith dimensions: the Eucharist and devotion to Mary,” the bishop said. “They pray 15 decades of the rosary every day, and they get up in the middle of the night for adoration in the chapel. To me coming here nearly every Sunday has been a gift, an opportunity to be a priest, an opportunity to really reach out to these guys.”

For the families, there are regional contacts – individuals selected to serve as the first personal contact in specific geographical areas for anyone interested in learning more about Comunità Cenacolo. The regional contacts also serve as a support system for the families during and after their sons or daughters have entered the program.
 

The Eucharist is the heart of Comunità Cenacolo. Through reading the scriptures and praying the rosary before the Blessed Sacrament, the men join as a family in offering themselves and the entire day to Jesus, asking him to heal and empower them with his Holy Spirit.

Periodic family retreats and First-Saturday meetings provide parents with an opportunity to journey with their sons and daughters by deepening their own conversion and by learning about community life. Many families of former members remain an integral part of the First-Saturday meetings, serving and helping other parents long after their sons and daughters have completed their community experience.

Dianne Norquist, mother of a former member and the regional contact for Northeast Florida, said families must understand that an addiction problem is not just their child’s dilemma – there may be reasons within the family for that problem. “When the young person enters the community and returns to the same environment, he may be pulled back into the sickness again. It’s important that the parents journey with him,” she said. “It took me years of experiencing the community before I saw the true wisdom here. For these men, rehabilitation programs and expensive treatment centers just didn’t work.

“What Sister Elvira really teaches is the Gospel – they are no longer selfish, prideful and arrogant – they learn to be respectful and to put others first in the most simple of things, such as serving water to the other person first when they sit down to eat. These are values almost lost in our society today,” Dianne said.

For more information about Comunità Cenacolo, visit www.hopereborn.org. If you would like to contribute to the community, write to 1050 Tallyrand Ave., Jacksonville, FL 32206.