Annual event is a way to serve the community at the hoildays, organizers say
After a busy week of prepping and celebrating Thanksgiving with their families, there was one more holiday tradition that Pam Mason and Jerilyn Bell were not going to miss.
Every year, the Knights and Ladies of Peter Claver from several courts and councils at parishes in the archdiocese host a meal on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. It’s open to anyone in the community who wants a hot meal — no questions asked — and a time to share in fellowship with one another.
Mason and Bell buzzed around the kitchen at St. Alphonsus Liguori (Rock) Church on Nov. 30 as a team of volunteers set out donated pans of smoked turkey, mashed potatoes with gravy, green beans, baked beans with beef brisket, apple cole slaw and Hawaiian rolls. Several other tables set up in the gymnasium featured a smorgasbord of cakes, pies and other desserts, all individually sliced, packaged and donated by volunteers from St. Paul Parish in Fenton.
Mason, who recently took the reigns from Bell in organizing the gathering, explained that the day was more than just serving a meal. “It’s an opportunity for fellowship and to just be a face (of Jesus) for others, to show that we do care, you know?” said the member of St. Peter Claver Parish in St. Louis.
Christian charity in the community is one of the hallmarks of the Knights and Ladies of Peter Claver — the oldest and largest historically African-American Catholic lay organization in the United States. The fraternal order is named for St. Peter Claver, a 17th-century Spanish Jesuit priest who witnessed the conditions of enslaved Africans brought to the Republic of Colombia. He attended to their physical and spiritual needs and converted many to the Catholic faith.
Bell said that the gathering reminded her of a homily she recently heard at Mass in which the Lord calls us to look at the least first. “The Lord is not looking at people who have,” said the member of the Rock Church. “He said the first shall be last, and the last should be first. So you have to make sure that the last are served first, because when you serving them, you’re serving Him.”
Visitors began trickling into the gymnasium around noon. Natasha Carter and Eirana Franklin walked through a light snow about a mile from the Missionaries of Charity, where they have been staying at the sisters’ shelter for women and children for the past week, stopping along the way to do some holiday window shopping.
“I mean, it’s a blessing what they’re doing, yeah?” Franklin said. “It’s a good meal. A nice meal hits differently when you’re kind of struggling and you’re broke.”
Nearby, Gerron Houston had spread out on a table new pairs of socks for visitors to take home. Houston helps coordinate the Knights and Ladies’ “Sock Angels” campaign, an annual event among parishes in the archdiocese to collect socks for people in need, which are then distributed to local organizations.
Donations are still trickling in, with more than 17,000 pairs collected already, said Houston, a member of St. Peter Claver Parish. The campaign has since spread to courts and councils outside of the St. Louis area; Houston added there have been discussions to make it a national program of the Knights of Peter Claver.
Over the years, the Knights and Ladies have served the Thanksgiving meal to hundreds of people. The first was held about 20 years ago, hosted by the late Eva Bell, a parishioner at Visitation-St. Ann who sought to do something charitable for the community.
Later, the tradition was handed over to Sylvester Raymond, a Knight and member of the former St. Augustine Parish, who organized the meal for roughly 10 years, even after a cancer diagnosis. He rallied Knights and Ladies from several parishes to help out. Over the years, the event has rotated to different parishes in north St. Louis, with the Rock Church hosting the past two years.
Raymond died in 2019, but his nephew Marlo Borders and great-niece Paige Borders continue to help serve the meals.
“We were always taught by my uncle that you need to appreciate life a little bit more and then take care of those who can’t take care of themselves,” Marlo Borders said. “He helped me with a lot of things, with lifelong lessons, and this is my way of giving back in the honor of his name.”
Redemptorist Father Rodney Olive, pastor of the Rock Church, said that the event fits right in with the parish’s ongoing social outreach, which includes a food pantry, weekly barbecue with the Grill to Glory program and a visiting nurses program, among other activities.
“The primary focus of the church is our social outreach, the whole social gospel of Jesus,” he said. “We do all the sacraments that all the other parishes do, but our primary focus is on the social gospel. The Rock is a community church, and everybody in the area knows if you have a need, you go to the Rock.”
