Published July 9, 1999
Motivation in Magadan springs from center of worship: The Mass
Editor’s Note: Archbishop Hurley will travel to Irkutsk this week for the groundbreaking of a new cathedral. He will meet for the first time with Bishop Jerzy Mazur, whose territory includes the city of Magadan.
Ten years ago this month a small group of scientists in a remote research station called Aborigen, 300 miles up in the mountains beyond Magadan, Soviet Far East, inscribed and signed a book about Magadan: "To priest. The First Mass in Magadan."
It was an emotional moment. There were 20 Russians, all assumed by me to be "atheistic" Communists, except for two Catholic Americans who, along with me, were part of an exchange team from Anchorage to Magadan.
"Would you show my son how one prays?" asked Dr. Berman, the head of the station. The teenage boy stood awkwardly at the suggestion. I felt also somewhat awkward as to how I might respond. I decided to celebrate a Mass, figuring that the scene of the Last Supper along with the Our Father would be the best teacher.
I briefed my translator and started the Mass. The Russians watched in respectful silence. There was little reaction until I gave the sign of peace and invited them to do the same. The group responded with no prompting and seemed to come alive as they exchanged greetings. The quiet Mass took on excitement. At the end they joyfully signed the book and presented it to me.
Why the excitement at the sign of peace? I do not know. My presence there was before the breakup of the Soviet Union. The only thought that came to me was that the liturgy, even one celebrated in an awkward, halting way through a translator, has a power of its own because of the real presence of Christ.
On my way to Russia I had wondered how I might speak about the church and the gospel to people who had been typed as atheists. Did we not often read and talk about Russians as atheist communists? I decided I would imitate Saint Paul, just speak to the people about Jesus Christ and what He said and did, similar to Paul speaking about the "unknown God" to the Greeks.
I was unaware until that first trip to Magadan that God was not an unknown quantity to the Russian people. Deep within them was a sense of God.
This sense among them was confirmed a day later. I engaged in a discussion, really an argument, with a Russian scientist over belief in God. It was an exchange similar to ones I have had in the United States with avowed atheists.
At the end of the discussion my translator said, "I am not an atheist. I believe. I believe. But I do not know what I believe." She did not know how to articulate what was deep within her soul. Communist repression for 70 years could suppress the words but not the spirit.
The Mass in Aborigen, I was to learn later, was not the first in the Magadan region. Aborigen was one of the slave labor camps for the mines from which Stalin got the gold that fueled his dictatorship. It is estimated that a million people died in those mines between 1939 and 1954. The workers had been prisoners, political enemies of the communist regime, WWII captives, and just people needed for slave labor.
Later when I was talking to Russians about the "first Mass in Magadan," a man corrected me. His father had been an Eastern Rite Catholic priest and spent years as a prisoner in a camp. He said Mass secretly.
"Where did he get the wine?" I asked.
"No wine. He used water."
Over the 10 years since that first trip, the centrality of the Mass to Catholics has been affirmed repeatedly. The Mission to Magadan is built on the Mass. From Father Austin Maubacher, the first pastor I sent to Magadan, to Father Michael Shields and Father David Means today, the Mass has been at the center of worship. From that center comes the motivation to reach out to the entire community, as they did during this past, terrible winter by providing food to the poor.