Pilgrims of Hope, Episode 8: Walking Outside Church Walls

Conversations about Finding and Sharing Hope: A video series for the Jubilee Year 2025

Hosted by Fr. Ron Will

Pope Francis declared 2025 as a jubilee year with the theme, the Year of Hope. Our mission statement at Precious Blood Renewal Center says that we are a safe and sacred place offering healing and hope, renewal and reconciliation for all people. Our mission statement and theme of the Jubilee year dovetail with one another; we are committed to offering hope, which includes naming experiences of hope in the midst of a lot of darkness in our world today.

This series, Traveling with Pilgrims of Hope, introduces us to individuals who have experienced hope and who are striving to bring hope to others. Pope Francis says that we need to ask for the grace to be people of hope. People filled with light, who can help shine light into the dark spaces around us, secure in the knowledge that God is with us, can make all the difference in the world.

Pope Francis also reminds us that hope is different than an optimistic attitude. Optimism can be dashed when things don’t go the way we expect, when we receive bad news or when we don’t get our way. Hope, on the other hand, exists in spite of negative outcomes because God is the author of our hope. Even the most dismal of projects can be infused with the possibility because the truly hopeful hope filled person knows that he or she is not facing this journey alone.

For this episode, Fr. Ron is interviewing Ansel Augustine, M.Div. Since April of this year, Augustine has served as assistant director of the Secretariat of Cultural Diversity in the Church at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and has staffed the bishops’ subcommittee on African American affairs.

Augustine is also the author of Praying with Our Feet: Encountering God in the Margins, published in June by Loyola Press

Augustine began his career in ministry 25 years ago as the youth minister in his home parish, St. Peter Claver in the Treme area of New Orleans, Louisiana. Since then, he has also served in prison and campus ministry and held positions with the archdioceses of New Orleans and Washington, D.C. He is on the faculty of Xavier University and Loyola University in New Orleans.

Following are highlights from the conversation between Fr. Ron Will and Ansel Augustine, edited for clarity. Watch the video for the full interview.

Fr. Ron Will: Your book is full of examples of people and situations in which you either brought hope or found hope. Can you tell us about some of those?

Ansel Augustine: I think that’s the whole ministry of being a follower of Christ. A disciple is called to be hope and joy; these are the two things we lean on. I forget who said this, it has been said that the worst billboard for our faith is an angry or upset Christian. You know what I’m saying? We’re called to bring hope and joy into the world that needs it, especially in the darkness that’s going on in our times. I’ll be honest, Fr. Ron, I don’t know if I could be a youth minister with the generation that’s here. Today is different [than when I started out 25 years ago]. But I think the calling is still the same: they want to see and feel, hope, love, and joy, and being witnessed by those that they encounter in the church.

One of the most powerful ministries I’ve been a part of is prison ministry. The reality of New Orleans is we’re number one in the world for mass incarceration, and that has affected many of my family and church members and community members. So how can I be a relevant minister if I’m just kept my ministry within the church walls and not among the people that are affected by the realities of the situations outside the walls, which is what “praying with our feet” means, putting our faith into action.

[But it also happens both ways.] These prisoners, incarcerated men and women I’ve encountered, whether it was a weekend retreat,  or a one day event, they check on me and make sure I’m okay just as much as I did for them. … During one of the darkest times of my life, when I was feeling all alone, some of the prisoners from Rayburn Correctional Facility, who the book is dedicated to, put their money together and sent me a crystal cross. They said, they were thinking about me, “we miss you and we hope life is good,” they said. It was just God using them to remind me, son, I have you. No matter what you’re going through, there’s still a reason to have hope.

The impact that I had on those men’s lives, the impact they have on me is just as powerful. So, yeah. I think one of the main gifts that I have and what gives me hope is those on the margin still showing their love for me, just as I’ve shown for them.

Fr. Ron Will: What are some of the key teachings of Jesus that motivate you, that filter into your life to be a person of hope?

Ansel Augustine: Well, I think, some of things I talked about earlier, the golden rule, love one another as I’ve loved you. Also the model of just Jesus’ witness. [And the witness of] Pope Francis. These are people that have positions and titles, but they humbled themselves to serve the most vulnerable, to serve the ones on the margins. They had the courage enough to speak truth to power so that those that are most vulnerable in society are seen and taken care of.

Those are the things that motivate me, and that’s also just the community I come from, New Orleans and Treme, the area in New Orleans, which is the oldest black neighborhood. The civil rights struggle that formed many of the black Catholic organizations that exist today in the country.

That mindset and the Beatitudes, which call us to look at how are we acting as church people in the society that needs it. So those are the teachings that stand out to me most. The fact that Jesus uses me, loves me enough, even in my sinfulness and brokenness. And so I’m called to love and help others in their journey as well.

Fr. Ron Will: In your book, you say there is a difference between being a peacemaker and being a peacekeeper. What’s the difference? How do you understand that?

Ansel Augustine: Well, it’s a thing that’s right here on my wall [a plaque] that I look at daily. Peacekeepers don’t care about resolving anything. They just want the noise to stop. To be a peacemaker, you actually have to confront the issue, deal with it, and try to broker peace in the midst of it. That’s why Jesus said, blessed are the peacemakers. For me, it’s being active, looking at what’s going on in our country, our world, our neighborhoods, our society, wherever there are challenges that are there, whatever they may be. And looking at where does Jesus want us to be, those peacemakers, to bring hope as we say to the hopeless. And even bring hope to ourselves. We can’t just not want to deal with stuff because it doesn’t affect us or hasn’t affected us yet. But knowing that we are called and intertwined as humanity and as brothers and sisters made in the image and likeness of God. And we have to look — and this is a Kwanza principle of Ji — that says, my brothers’ and sisters’ problems are my problems. We have to walk with those who are in dark situations, like I said, with the prisoners. with the people sitting next to us on the plane, with whoever it may be in our neighborhoods that may be suffering, and let them know that Jesus loves them as well. And that’s where peace comes from, creating the transformation of people, to let them know that people care and the church cares.

Fr. Ron Will: I’m sure you’ve come into situations where the person on the receiving end, they don’t want your hope. How do you handle that?

Ansel Augustine: Well, you have to understand where they are coming from. Sometimes [your approach] may be confrontational because of church hurt. You know, sometimes I represent that church hurt stuff. … One of the things I used to do back home, was I was one of the people that people would call on when there was a shooting in the neighborhood, or, you know, a young person that died or whatever. And we would organize the prayer service in the neighborhood, and just different things to gather people to try to have a moment of healing. And then some people are just angry at God and don’t want to hear it. So at the end of the day, sometimes just being the listening ear, knowing that when they’re punching at you with the words or with the emotion, it’s not you, it’s what they’re experiencing or what someone else has done to them or what they’re feeling at that moment.

Sometimes the moment of hope is just being that companion, as Pope Francis says, journeying together with them in those moments of darkness. Sometimes they’ll come around; sometimes they won’t. But just in that moment, just showing that someone cared about them and their situation, whether it was resolved or not.

Fr. Ron Will: You said earlier that you’re hosting listening sessions with young people around the country.

Ansel Augustine: As you know, there’s a big generation gap [in the church], especially within cultural communities, but especially looking at the African American community. Research shows, no matter the culture, youth and young adults are leaving organized religion in droves, and not just the Catholic faith, in droves. … This is something I’ve always done, always had the heart for. I go into those spaces and listen to these folks about why are you leaving? What’s not working? And what can we do with you that you’ll be a part the bridge for this gap? These are the kind of listening sessions that we’ve had. I did one in New Orleans, and that’s been the basis for what we’ve been doing regionally in different places and spaces.

The sessions are also a kind of wake-up call slash come to Jesus moment with the leaders in their parishes and diocese. Where are your young people? Why don’t you know where they are? Then they start having those hard conversations with parents, pastors and other community leaders. What caused the rift? How do we heal the rift, and how can you move forward?

Fr. Ron Will: What else would you like our listeners to know about the importance of being an agent of hope?

Ansel Augustine: When you’re struggling with “what I shouldn’t do” or “what I should do,” remember that at the end of the day Jesus is the one doing the work through us. So trust the process… That’s the hope. We have to remember that God puts us in places that we might not ever imagine being, to do a work that we might never have imagined that we could do, because we rely on his strength. I encourage all the listeners to see where God wants you to step out so that he can show out through you. And that’s what faith is all about.

All of the videos in this series can be found here: Traveling with Pilgrims of Hope

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[Fr. Ron Will, a Precious Blood priest and spiritual director, is a graduate of Catholic Theological Union and Creighton University’s School of Christian Spirituality. He has a special interest in helping form intentional disciples of Jesus, encouraging others to go spiritually deep-sea diving to explore a deeper relationship with God, and walking with people as they dive into the ocean of God’s mystery actually experiencing God rather than simply dipping one’s toe into the water.]

Photo Credit: ID 321463961 | Anchor © Yulia Ryabokon | Dreamstime.com

Music Credit: “We Are Marching” (Siyahamba). Performed by First Christian Church of Tacoma. Text: South African. Tune: South African. © 1984, Utryck, Walton Music Corporation, agent. Used with permission under onelicense.net, #A-725830

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