As if on cue, the clouds above Alice opened and the rains began to fall 30 minutes before Bishop Wm. Michael Mulvey began celebration of a Mass to bless farmers and their crops. For an area that has been withered dry by an extended drought, both the rains and the bishop’s prayers were welcomed indeed.
Farmers from throughout the diocese were invited to the special Mass on the Feast Day of St. Isidore the patron of farmers, which the bishop plans to make an annual Mass to be celebrated in different rural parishes each year.
While the recent rains have been a blessing, all agree that the area has a ways to go before it can get out of the drought designation and its effects. The rains have helped establish good crops, but a lot more has to happen to get out of drought conditions, Rogelio Mercado, Jim Wells County Extension Agent, said.
“We have started to see a long-term weather pattern that promises more rain this summer and a wetter winter,” Mercado said.
Still, to get out of the “hardest drought on record,” much more rain is needed to create a “deep moisture profile” and “fill the aquifers,” Mercado said.
The rain has been good for some crops and not so good for others. Crops have suffered “too much stress that yields will not reach bumper crowd levels,” Mercado said.
The range and pasture conditions are looking good for ranchers, Mercado said. While there is a shortage of hay, and livestock numbers are down, the prices are good.
The drought may be breaking, but it could come back anytime, said Lawrence Pawlik who farms nearly 6,000 acres between Alice and Orange Grove with one of his sons. Two other sons also farm in the area on their own farms. This year he planted milo, corn and cotton. In years past he has also grown sunflowers.
Pawlik, 81, has been farming for 60 years and has seen worse times. The early 1950s were rough, he said. In 1955, he donated more to the church than what he made. “Of course it wasn’t much,” he said with a chuckle.
Pawlik appreciated Bishop Mulvey coming to Alice to celebrate the Mass for farmers and ranchers.
“It was a very nice thing to do. I enjoyed it more than I have any other Mass in a long time. It showed that other people do think of us,” Pawlik said.
Bishop Mulvey shared with those in attendance the wisdom a pastor had shared with him once, when he was assigned to do his diaconate in Liverpool, England. The people who work the land, the pastor told him, “are the most real of all people, because they depend on someone else, they depend on the Almighty God and they know that, day after day.”
“We cannot turn on the rain, we have to ask for it. We cannot…create the crops. We have to plant them, care for them, till them. For that we depend on God,” Bishop Mulvey said.
This dependence on God and the elements underscore the character of farmers who must possess humility, trust and thanksgiving, the bishop said. Their humility comes from the understanding that as people who work the land they are “children of God and…depend on our Heavenly Father.”
They also have to trust God, “even when crops fail.” Bishop Mulvey said God “will never harm us” but will at times test our faith and our perseverance. “We are trusting people,” Bishop Mulvey said.
People this “close to the elements God has given us” are also people of “thanksgiving,” the bishop said.
“When we are working the land, we are near the elements of Creation, such as you are here. You realize that in that humility of spirit, as a child of God—trusting in the Father—that He will give what we need that when we receive, we also give thanks,” Bishop Mulvey said.
The Mass was celebrated at St. Elizabeth of Hungary, with its Pastor Msgr. Leonard Pivonka and Fathers Julian Cabrera, Romeo Salinas and Tom Showalter, SOLT, concelebrating with Bishop Mulvey. Father Joseph Lopez was Master of Ceremonies and Deacon Jim Carlisle also served.
St. Elizabeth parishioners hosted a reception for the farmers and ranchers in the parish hall after the Mass.