‘Lord’s Day Dinners’ help bring merged parish community together

By Bill Doyle
CFP Correspondent

Since St. James, St. Mary and St. Philip parishes merged in 2022 to form Our Lady of Hope Parish in Grafton, the new parish has held numerous dinners to try to bring the parishioners closer together.

The latest of what the parish calls Lord’s Day dinners was held last Sunday when 145 people attended a tribute to the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe at the hall on St. James’ campus.
Father Anthony Mpagi, pastor of Our Lady of Hope Parish, led a prayer service at the church and then everyone processed to the church hall for a Mexican dinner provided at no charge by Cancúns Family Mexican Restaurant in Grafton.

The Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe is celebrated each year on Dec. 12 to commemorate the Virgin Mary appearing to St. Juan Diego in Mexico in 1531 to ask him to tell the bishop to build a shrine in her honor on that spot. Mary left her image on his cloak as proof to the bishop that she had appeared.

Father Mpagi and Bob Cardoza, a parishioner who organized the dinner, had lunch at Cancúns and asked if the restaurant could help in some way. The owners offered to donate the meals at no cost.

“We were really, really surprised,” Father Mpagi said. “It was unbelievable. They’ll do anything for their Lord.”Adrianna Santos, of the Mariachi Internacional de Boston band, and Father Anthony Mpagi, pastor at Our Lady of Hope Parish in Grafton, were among those who enjoyed the Mexican dinner at the parish hall on Sunday
Father Mpagi pointed out that the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe “is really deep in their blood.”

The dinner was a big hit and thanks to Cancúns donating the meals and the $15 cost of the dinner tickets, $1,500 was raised for the parish after expenses.

“I got nothing but great reviews,” Mr. Cardoza said. “I got calls all night, emails, texts. Everybody was happy.”

Cancúns’ owner Silvia Jimenez, a parishioner at Our Lady of Hope, cooked the meals with Carlos Jimenez, a manager at the restaurant who has no relation to Silvia, and Mr. Jimenez’s wife, Mary Kate Jimenez.

“It’s just part of giving back to the community,” Mr. Jimenez said, “and something we wanted to do with the church because the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe is a big holiday in the Mexican culture.”

At the St. James Church hall, a mariachi band, Mariachi Internacional de Boston, performed Mexican music. The band also played while about 10 children took turns pounding away with a party stick at a 52-inch pinata filled with six pounds of candy.Bob Cardoza organized the Mexican dinner at Our Lady of Hope Parish in Grafton to help bring people together from the three merged parishes.
“One little girl broke it open and the crowd went crazy when she broke it,” Mr. Cardoza said.
Mr. Cardoza organized the dinners, he said, after Father Derek A. Mobilio, then associate pastor at Our Lady of Hope, suggested two years ago that the merged parish should hold dinners to draw the parishioners closer to one another.

The parish has also held spaghetti and meatball dinners, St. Patrick’s Day corned beef and cabbage dinners with entertainment by Murphy’s Irish Step Dancers, ham and bean suppers and a Portuguese boiled dinner. Usually, 80-100 people attended.

“They’ve gone very well because there’s a sense of community and fellowship,” Father Mpagi said. “After the Eucharist, we gather as a community to share conversation, stories of our lives, stories of our faith, together in a joyful mood. It is to celebrate the body of Christ together so they’ve gone really well.”

“They’ve brought the parishioners together,” Mr. Cardoza said. “A lot of [attendees] have gone to all of them.”

Mr. Cardoza said he and some other parishioners attended last Sunday even though Mexican food isn’t their favorite. He said parishioners have told them they’ve had a lot of fun at the festive dinners. Parishioners who attend range from couples with young children to senior citizens.

“For the most part, they’ve been working,” Mr. Cardoza said of the dinners.

Mr. Cardoza said non-parishioners have been invited to the dinners in hopes that they might join the parish.

Joe Garabedian cooked for many of the dinners and Mr. Cardoza cooked for the most recent spaghetti and meatball dinner.

Mr. Cardoza, 71, was a parishioner at St. James and now he attends Mass at St. Mary’s. St. Mary and  St. James churches are still in use. St. Philip is closed and up for sale.

Mr. Cardoza said parishioners from the three parishes have “melded together fine” from what he’s experienced at Mass.

Father Mpagi said accepting the merger will take time for some.

“The merger is a process,” Father Mpagi said. “It’s like labor pains. It’s a process that goes inch by inch. I think it has gone well overall. There hasn’t been any backlash that I’ve seen.

People are aware of the fact that churches are stronger when they come together. St. James couldn’t sustain itself. St. Philip couldn’t sustain. So I think the bishop was wise in foreseeing this. We’re stronger if we’re together. The merger takes a while. They say it takes maybe five, six, seven years for that to get together.”

Father Mpagi said attendance at the Masses is strong, participation is more active and resources are better managed.

“We have outreach ministries which are stronger because they’ve come together,” Father Mpagi said. “So in the end it’s for the better.”

Our Lady of Hope parishioners can also get to know each other better by taking part in the parish’s Scouts, Knights of Columbus council or pickleball teams for adults.

Mr. Cardoza is so dedicated to his parish he services the snowblowers and lawnmowers at both churches at no charge.

“He’s been very good to us,” Father Mpagi said “He’s a man of great service. He’s a man who loves his church. He’s just continuing to do what he did when he was very active at [Our Lady of] Mount Carmel [Parish]. We’re truly grateful for him.”