About John P MartinJohn Patrick Martin was born of Irish immigrant parents in New York City in 1939, partaking of their Irish culture, proudly, along with his four sisters, Kitty, Mary, Maggie and Ellen.
At age twelve his inspiration to become a foreign missionary carried him through 11 years of seminary to ordination in 1966 and a first assignment to Mexico. He dedicated himself to his priestly ministry including a variety of social and spiritual developmental activities until 1975. He then answered his leadership’s invitation to join the new Bangladesh Unit for insertion, through Christian testimony, into the Muslim environment as brother and friend. Through the influence of Father Bede Griffiths, he became enamored of the many opportunities for living dialogue with believers of other religious traditions in South Asia. He relished the call to share the fruits of this rich life with folks in Mexico again for fifteen years, for more of the same as above, and at home through mission education programs, inter-religious forums, and his new career as a writer. |
Here is the author with his Yucatecan white pants and guayabera and ocher sannyasi shawl from India, combining elements of both cultures, Parliament of World Religions, 2015, Salt Lake City, Utah.
|
Autobiography of John P. Martín, MM
February 2018
Born into the Irish immigrant family of James and Mary Martin on December 28, 1939, in New York’s Upper West Side, John was blessed with an excellent family with four sisters and parish formation in the ways and means of his New York Irish Catholic Tradition.
In the beginning, Johnny was only 12 years old when he received his calling to become a missionary, amidst a fruitful career as an altar boy in his parish of Ascension in Manhattan, New York City. In the last year of grammar school, he had contact with several Maryknollers in their East 39th Street promotion house and only due to the insistence of Bro. John Linhardt, FSC, his 8th grade teacher did he stay home to study two years at Bishop Dubois High School. By age 15, he entered Maryknoll´s minor seminary, the Venard, near Scranton Pennsylvania, to his great delight to be in such a lush environment and with small groups of companions for classes, manual labor and sports, after growing up on the sidewalks of New York. Oh! the wonderful impact of being thrust into the mysteries of Greek and to find himself reading the New Testament at the feet of Bart Galvin by senior year in high school! Languages and the Bible were thus imprinted in his character for life. The example of the veteran missioners there left him a lasting memory of good will and joy to be following in their steps.
That first week at Maryknoll´s College at Glen Ellyn, Illinois in September 1957 found young John in the infirmary among the first of several hundred who fell to the Asian flu. Symbolic perhaps of the rough years ahead! With some rare exceptions, those four years left him with many difficult experiences and memories. For one thing, the more intimate environment of the Venard was replaced by masses of lads, no friendships and distant professors, and being introverted and immature, he felt the weight of those lonely years. Men like Tom Malone, Gene Kennedy and Paul D´Arcy, and a nearby family of dear friends (to this day) stood out as playing key roles for him as he struggled through those four tough years gaining a BA in philosophy nonetheless.
Maybe there was some unperceived spiritual growth in that novitiate year at Bedford Massachusetts (1961-2), but in retrospect it was a strange mixture of budding friendships (against the holy rule, remember?), tough discipline, weird Latin classes (again?) on rubrics to clean chalices, and ethereal spiritual notions from a saintly man. Oh, yes, he did learn to kill chickens, too, and to type like a bandit to please his disciplinarian superior.
The four years of theology at Maryknoll New York (1962-6) were filled with encounters with many returned missioners at the Center and on visits, a pledge of good things to come. Academically, John decided to passively resist the Thomistic intellectual formation program by reading and studying areas of his interest (like the works of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin) and never preparing for an exam! Low marks were never picked up by the staff as a sign of something wrong, although curiously in every other academic endeavor outside the seminary he pulled straight A´s! The years of the Vatican Council coincided with his years at Maryknoll Seminary, and he assimilated an attitude of unbounded optimism, of challenging the “usual”, and a hope for a more progressive theological, liturgical and pastoral revelation, just around the corner. Summer time linguistic studies at Oklahoma and Georgetown laid a supplementary foundation on his penchant for languages and cross-cultural communication. He earned two Masters degrees in theology and religious education in those four years by 1966.
He became aware of an unusual divergence from the interest of his classmates in things priestly, like designing one´s own chalice, etc. in that last year. The real joy of 1966 was learning that he would be going to Mexico, a big unknown but soon the object of his curiosity and reading. He arrived in Mexico City with classmates Geary Simmons and Ed Farrell at the Foreign Mission Seminary co-founded by our Bishop Alonso Escalante for the Guadalupe Missioners, with whom John has maintained some fond friendships over these 52 years. Language school was in Cuernavaca under controversial Ivan Illich, sure to upset your set ways of thinking about anything, but a lively place to be and to meet key folks from North and South America.
During one of his turns to help out at a parish in Mexico City, John had the sensation one day that the Maryknollers were doing mostly priestly work (like at home, only in Spanish) and wondered what was the missionary aspect of it all! Then, on to meet the Maryknollers together in Merida, Yucatan for a post-chapter assembly in April 1967 and to start his first formal assignment in the Colonia Yucatan, a lumber company town stuck in the far eastern forests of the peninsula. His first pastor was Pete Petrucci. He found this rural community to have imprinted some lasting marks in his life and heart: in many ways, it was as perfect an environment and community as one can expect to live and work in. John developed many friendships and a special connection with the extended Nunez family. This parish had so many advantages in fact that the decision was made that it would be turned over to the local clergy in 1969, as the best of our commitments. The wrenching separation led John into the depths of a depression in faraway Mexico City. Too much love too soon abandoned!
A year doing Clinical Pastoral Education at Central Islip State Hospital on Long Island from September 1970 to May 1971 cured the depression and enabled him to gain valuable experience and insight for his return to the same parish in Mexico City where he used to help out on weekends. The year there, 1971-72, proved to be one of the most productive and satisfying of his career, due to the freedom to create what came to be called “basic Christian communities”. Accompanying alcoholics in AA meetings and giving them occasional brief instructions was a great challenge and joy. An unpleasant incident in the tension-torn Mexico Region of Maryknollers found him bounced down to Merida in 1972, only to be bounced back to Mexico City within a year to research a new pastoral commitment with Miguel Aragon. They eventually settled in a new area called El Arenal or the “Sand Pit” behind the airport where John continued more of the same community building and alcoholism work from 1973 to 1975. The unexpected departure of Miguel for the ways of fatherhood in a family left John alone again in 1974, and having just read his leadership Council´s invitation for volunteers for new missions, he instinctively opted for Bangladesh, It would provide him with the opportunity to live fully as a missioner among non-Christian Muslims without any priestly role, which was the kernel of his original calling in 1952!
He experienced a severe culture shock the first week in Bangladesh in December 1975 that had the effect of tossing him wholesale from the masculine to the feminine side of his personality. This dislocation upset his life in every conceivable way, with many physical illnesses, constant depression, diminished intellectual activity, slow language learning, and a return to introversion (that had gotten cured by the extroverted Mexicans). A strong intimate community prayer life with his four companions was a real blessing and enabled all to discover individual ways to live as brothers and friends to their Muslim neighbors. Not an easy task given their lack of previous experience with Muslims and the Bengali people, and the lack of any known role or slot for them to fit into. They were creating their roles as they went.
In the beginning, Johnny was only 12 years old when he received his calling to become a missionary, amidst a fruitful career as an altar boy in his parish of Ascension in Manhattan, New York City. In the last year of grammar school, he had contact with several Maryknollers in their East 39th Street promotion house and only due to the insistence of Bro. John Linhardt, FSC, his 8th grade teacher did he stay home to study two years at Bishop Dubois High School. By age 15, he entered Maryknoll´s minor seminary, the Venard, near Scranton Pennsylvania, to his great delight to be in such a lush environment and with small groups of companions for classes, manual labor and sports, after growing up on the sidewalks of New York. Oh! the wonderful impact of being thrust into the mysteries of Greek and to find himself reading the New Testament at the feet of Bart Galvin by senior year in high school! Languages and the Bible were thus imprinted in his character for life. The example of the veteran missioners there left him a lasting memory of good will and joy to be following in their steps.
That first week at Maryknoll´s College at Glen Ellyn, Illinois in September 1957 found young John in the infirmary among the first of several hundred who fell to the Asian flu. Symbolic perhaps of the rough years ahead! With some rare exceptions, those four years left him with many difficult experiences and memories. For one thing, the more intimate environment of the Venard was replaced by masses of lads, no friendships and distant professors, and being introverted and immature, he felt the weight of those lonely years. Men like Tom Malone, Gene Kennedy and Paul D´Arcy, and a nearby family of dear friends (to this day) stood out as playing key roles for him as he struggled through those four tough years gaining a BA in philosophy nonetheless.
Maybe there was some unperceived spiritual growth in that novitiate year at Bedford Massachusetts (1961-2), but in retrospect it was a strange mixture of budding friendships (against the holy rule, remember?), tough discipline, weird Latin classes (again?) on rubrics to clean chalices, and ethereal spiritual notions from a saintly man. Oh, yes, he did learn to kill chickens, too, and to type like a bandit to please his disciplinarian superior.
The four years of theology at Maryknoll New York (1962-6) were filled with encounters with many returned missioners at the Center and on visits, a pledge of good things to come. Academically, John decided to passively resist the Thomistic intellectual formation program by reading and studying areas of his interest (like the works of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin) and never preparing for an exam! Low marks were never picked up by the staff as a sign of something wrong, although curiously in every other academic endeavor outside the seminary he pulled straight A´s! The years of the Vatican Council coincided with his years at Maryknoll Seminary, and he assimilated an attitude of unbounded optimism, of challenging the “usual”, and a hope for a more progressive theological, liturgical and pastoral revelation, just around the corner. Summer time linguistic studies at Oklahoma and Georgetown laid a supplementary foundation on his penchant for languages and cross-cultural communication. He earned two Masters degrees in theology and religious education in those four years by 1966.
He became aware of an unusual divergence from the interest of his classmates in things priestly, like designing one´s own chalice, etc. in that last year. The real joy of 1966 was learning that he would be going to Mexico, a big unknown but soon the object of his curiosity and reading. He arrived in Mexico City with classmates Geary Simmons and Ed Farrell at the Foreign Mission Seminary co-founded by our Bishop Alonso Escalante for the Guadalupe Missioners, with whom John has maintained some fond friendships over these 52 years. Language school was in Cuernavaca under controversial Ivan Illich, sure to upset your set ways of thinking about anything, but a lively place to be and to meet key folks from North and South America.
During one of his turns to help out at a parish in Mexico City, John had the sensation one day that the Maryknollers were doing mostly priestly work (like at home, only in Spanish) and wondered what was the missionary aspect of it all! Then, on to meet the Maryknollers together in Merida, Yucatan for a post-chapter assembly in April 1967 and to start his first formal assignment in the Colonia Yucatan, a lumber company town stuck in the far eastern forests of the peninsula. His first pastor was Pete Petrucci. He found this rural community to have imprinted some lasting marks in his life and heart: in many ways, it was as perfect an environment and community as one can expect to live and work in. John developed many friendships and a special connection with the extended Nunez family. This parish had so many advantages in fact that the decision was made that it would be turned over to the local clergy in 1969, as the best of our commitments. The wrenching separation led John into the depths of a depression in faraway Mexico City. Too much love too soon abandoned!
A year doing Clinical Pastoral Education at Central Islip State Hospital on Long Island from September 1970 to May 1971 cured the depression and enabled him to gain valuable experience and insight for his return to the same parish in Mexico City where he used to help out on weekends. The year there, 1971-72, proved to be one of the most productive and satisfying of his career, due to the freedom to create what came to be called “basic Christian communities”. Accompanying alcoholics in AA meetings and giving them occasional brief instructions was a great challenge and joy. An unpleasant incident in the tension-torn Mexico Region of Maryknollers found him bounced down to Merida in 1972, only to be bounced back to Mexico City within a year to research a new pastoral commitment with Miguel Aragon. They eventually settled in a new area called El Arenal or the “Sand Pit” behind the airport where John continued more of the same community building and alcoholism work from 1973 to 1975. The unexpected departure of Miguel for the ways of fatherhood in a family left John alone again in 1974, and having just read his leadership Council´s invitation for volunteers for new missions, he instinctively opted for Bangladesh, It would provide him with the opportunity to live fully as a missioner among non-Christian Muslims without any priestly role, which was the kernel of his original calling in 1952!
He experienced a severe culture shock the first week in Bangladesh in December 1975 that had the effect of tossing him wholesale from the masculine to the feminine side of his personality. This dislocation upset his life in every conceivable way, with many physical illnesses, constant depression, diminished intellectual activity, slow language learning, and a return to introversion (that had gotten cured by the extroverted Mexicans). A strong intimate community prayer life with his four companions was a real blessing and enabled all to discover individual ways to live as brothers and friends to their Muslim neighbors. Not an easy task given their lack of previous experience with Muslims and the Bengali people, and the lack of any known role or slot for them to fit into. They were creating their roles as they went.
Father Bede Griffiths celebrates Eucharist in Indian fashion, with the aurhor (left), Shantivanam Ashram, Trichy, Tamil Nadu, India, December 1979. | El Padre Beda Griffiths celebra la Eucaristía al estilo indio, con el autor (izq.), Shantivanam Ashram, Trichy, Tamil Nadu, India, Diciembre 1979.
During those years, he was blessed to live for various periods at Shantivanam (Forest of Peace) Ashram in South India where Fr. Bede Griffiths provided a refuge for serious seekers of inculturation of Indian and Christian values. Here also John discovered the name for his culture shock experience and the cure for it too, in the dedication to a contemplative lifestyle that he has tried to live ever since the first visit in 1979. His vision of himself got expanded too, and in subsequent years he felt the call to make ever longer pilgrimages in India to the sacred places of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs, ending up with six months in India prior to returning home in mid-1982. He lived there and in India for 7 years (1975-82).
Thanks to the long rope that Maryknoll´s Superior General Jim Noonan gave him, he was able to fully get over the syndrome of the returned overseas missioner. Then to Los Angeles for five years of mission education work as of January 1984, among Mexicans (ah, happy times again, as he never forgot his Spanish), visiting many parishes, getting to know the local church and getting involved in a variety of mission-oriented and cross-cultural activities. An unfortunate clash of interests brought about his resignation from the Development Department in 1988 and led to a short interlude once again in Merida. He entered a study program at Harvard´s School of Theology (1989-91) which yielded him a Master´s degree in Hindu and Islamic studies. But this period was painful for it entailed an alienation from Maryknoll, which in the long run enabled him to get cured from an adolescent dependence on the Society, having entered the seminary at the age of 15.
In 1991, he was granted a special permission to return alone to India for three years, and miraculously got a five year visa in both his American and Irish passports, something no missionary ever gets. The trick was that his Harvard degree got him in as a spiritual seeker, much to the vainglory of Indians that foreigners would seek out their spiritual treasures. The funny Spirit of God acts, well, in funny ways: he lived in and near Calcutta because he spoke Bengali, but failed to implement his three part program presented to the Superior General, only to find that in time, he ended up living as a hermit in Shantiniketan, the university town of Rabindranath Tagore. Much meditation or contemplative prayer, lots of reflective writing, visits to friends locally and in Calcutta and pilgrimages to key places, like Shantivanam Ashram filled his two years. Just prior to Father Bede´s death on May 13, 1993, while in a semi-divine state, he confided to John that he had had a “dream of him living in a room prepared for him in Mexico”.
That got him wondering about his future again, to return to priestly ministry. After his return home in 1994 and two years on development in Chicago and Jacksonville, in January 1997 he did return to live and work as a priestly minister in his beloved Yucatan, near his adopted family and friends, closing the circle with a more mature integration of both his priestly and missionary charisms.
He lived in a “colonia” (neighborhood) that was a real challenge to live out his contemplative calling with compassion for the people of this area with their traits of being a thoroughly marginalized people. Age old social forces have made them believe that they are less than others, and this low self esteem has led some to fight against the larger society’s put down and survive as integrated families and with mature children. But most of the people accepted themselves as less than the rest and lived lives of severe apathy, depression (with suicides and attempted suicides), rampant alcoholism and increasing drug addiction, and disintegrated families continuing to create maladjusted children. With his eight years there he saw some results in their developing a better sense of self, an ideal of an integrated family and the organization of a community council to coordinate various areas of the life of the community: Family Life, Social Works, Finances and Liturgy. A self-evaluation by this council in 2004 showed that they can be proud of small but significant achievements in several of these areas.
John remained in the diocese of Yucatan from 2005 until January 2012, emphasizing his role as a missionary in service to the local church. He accompanied two communities that he founded: one called Contemplative Outreach to teach folks the riches of centering prayer from the teachings of Father Thomas Keating, and the other a branch of Maryknoll’s Affiliates community wherein local folks nurtured their missionary spirituality and involvements.
He returned to Maryknoll in New York in January 2012 for a sabbatical dedicated to learning to do creative non-fiction writing with a certificate from New York University. He has written a memoir, many personal essays and edited several collections of past writings from his missionary life, all in fulfilment of his goal to share the fruits of his rich missionary life with others. He accomplishes the latter goal also by preaching in churches for Maryknoll and other missionary groups.
Thanks to the long rope that Maryknoll´s Superior General Jim Noonan gave him, he was able to fully get over the syndrome of the returned overseas missioner. Then to Los Angeles for five years of mission education work as of January 1984, among Mexicans (ah, happy times again, as he never forgot his Spanish), visiting many parishes, getting to know the local church and getting involved in a variety of mission-oriented and cross-cultural activities. An unfortunate clash of interests brought about his resignation from the Development Department in 1988 and led to a short interlude once again in Merida. He entered a study program at Harvard´s School of Theology (1989-91) which yielded him a Master´s degree in Hindu and Islamic studies. But this period was painful for it entailed an alienation from Maryknoll, which in the long run enabled him to get cured from an adolescent dependence on the Society, having entered the seminary at the age of 15.
In 1991, he was granted a special permission to return alone to India for three years, and miraculously got a five year visa in both his American and Irish passports, something no missionary ever gets. The trick was that his Harvard degree got him in as a spiritual seeker, much to the vainglory of Indians that foreigners would seek out their spiritual treasures. The funny Spirit of God acts, well, in funny ways: he lived in and near Calcutta because he spoke Bengali, but failed to implement his three part program presented to the Superior General, only to find that in time, he ended up living as a hermit in Shantiniketan, the university town of Rabindranath Tagore. Much meditation or contemplative prayer, lots of reflective writing, visits to friends locally and in Calcutta and pilgrimages to key places, like Shantivanam Ashram filled his two years. Just prior to Father Bede´s death on May 13, 1993, while in a semi-divine state, he confided to John that he had had a “dream of him living in a room prepared for him in Mexico”.
That got him wondering about his future again, to return to priestly ministry. After his return home in 1994 and two years on development in Chicago and Jacksonville, in January 1997 he did return to live and work as a priestly minister in his beloved Yucatan, near his adopted family and friends, closing the circle with a more mature integration of both his priestly and missionary charisms.
He lived in a “colonia” (neighborhood) that was a real challenge to live out his contemplative calling with compassion for the people of this area with their traits of being a thoroughly marginalized people. Age old social forces have made them believe that they are less than others, and this low self esteem has led some to fight against the larger society’s put down and survive as integrated families and with mature children. But most of the people accepted themselves as less than the rest and lived lives of severe apathy, depression (with suicides and attempted suicides), rampant alcoholism and increasing drug addiction, and disintegrated families continuing to create maladjusted children. With his eight years there he saw some results in their developing a better sense of self, an ideal of an integrated family and the organization of a community council to coordinate various areas of the life of the community: Family Life, Social Works, Finances and Liturgy. A self-evaluation by this council in 2004 showed that they can be proud of small but significant achievements in several of these areas.
John remained in the diocese of Yucatan from 2005 until January 2012, emphasizing his role as a missionary in service to the local church. He accompanied two communities that he founded: one called Contemplative Outreach to teach folks the riches of centering prayer from the teachings of Father Thomas Keating, and the other a branch of Maryknoll’s Affiliates community wherein local folks nurtured their missionary spirituality and involvements.
He returned to Maryknoll in New York in January 2012 for a sabbatical dedicated to learning to do creative non-fiction writing with a certificate from New York University. He has written a memoir, many personal essays and edited several collections of past writings from his missionary life, all in fulfilment of his goal to share the fruits of his rich missionary life with others. He accomplishes the latter goal also by preaching in churches for Maryknoll and other missionary groups.
Contact Father John P Martin
johnthep@msn.com
johnthep@msn.com
