By Michelle Martin
STAFF WRITER

	Julie Hess holds hands with Martha, a friend who is attending her first SPRED session at Queen of Angels. (photo by David V. Kamba)

One by one, people trickled into the warm, welcoming room at the Queen of Angels Parish Center. As they came in, Julie Hess greeted each one, and invited them to choose activities to pursue quietly.

Katie worked quietly on a tabletop loom.

Mike painted a tree on a small canvas. Peter investigated a music box, and Judy rubbed chalk over salt to color it, then poured the colored salt into a decorative bottle.

Half the group was adults who have developmental disabilities, “friends” in the parlance of the Special Religious Education for those with Disabilities. The other half was volunteer catechists, who share 12 evenings a year learning about their relationships with God and people with their special friends.

The group is among more than 100 communities of faith that help connect people with developmental disabilities to the church in the Archdiocese of Chicago, where Special Religious Education first got its start in the 1960s.

Hess, one of two community outreach coordinators for the archdiocesan SPRED office, works out of Queen of Angels, along with serving as a catechist in the North Side parish’s adult SPRED group. As a community outreach coordinator, she helps find people with developmental disabilities who might benefit from the program. Some of the disabled friends who come to her group live in group homes; others live with their families in Queen of Angels or neighboring parishes.

Queen of Angels operates SPRED groups only for adults, but nearby parishes run programs for other age groups. As Queen of Angels accepts adults from other parishes, the other parishes accept children from Queen of Angels, Hess explained.

While many parishes are home to SPRED groups, Queen of Angels has shown a remarkable commitment to the program, creating a special room designed for SPRED activities.

It has soft track lighting, open shelves to display projects, separate areas for activities and catechesis, and, perhaps most unusual, one-way mirrors and microphones to allow observers to watch and listen to sessions without disturbing the group.

“We used to meet in the rectory basement,” Hess said. “This is just wonderful.”

Even more wonderful to Father William O’Brien, Queen of Angels pastor, was the way the parish decided to devote space and money in the renovation plans for the parish center for the SPRED program.

“We had a committee of 20 or 21 people, and it came from them,” O’Brien said. “One of their first priorities was to get SPRED out of the rectory. There was not 18 seconds of discussion on the fact that it needed room in the parish center.”

The parish benefited from a $4.3 million grant from an anonymous trust to actually do renovation in the school and the parish center. Some of that money went to create the room, although the SPRED catechists themselves raised money to purchase the tables, chairs and other furniture.

During the SPRED session, Hess circulated around the tables and chairs as the members of the group pursued their activities and the music slowed down.

When everyone had arrived and had time to work on an activity, Hess started inviting them to put their projects away and join the silent circle. Just as the sensory activities provided a needed transition from a hectic day, the silent circle provided a way to move from the individual joy of creating to the communal joy of learning about and worshiping God.

From the silent circle, the catechists and friends were called by name into the celebration room—separated only from the activity room by lighting, and by the pale green paint on the walls. The friends and the catechists took their seats in a semicircle around a low table, made out of a varnished slice of a tree trunk. On the table sat a single lit candle, an open Bible and some flowers.

The group uses Scripture, music and movement as part of its teaching sessions, just as SPRED groups do at special SPRED Masses—those held at Queen of Angels and those held at the Archdiocesan SPRED Center at 2956 S. Lowe Ave. in Chicago.

Such Masses seemed to make some Queen of Angels parishioners uncomfortable when O’Brien first came to the parish as a resident 10 years ago, he said. But since the special SPRED Masses have been prefaced with the statement that, “We believe at Queen of Angels that no one is excluded from the Eucharistic table. We hope that the whole parish will join in praying with our disabled friends,” acceptance has grown, he said.

Acceptance was one of the themes of Hess’s SPRED session. When everyone was seated for catechesis, Hess began the lesson by drawing on an experience common to everyone, catechists and friends alike: what it’s like to join a new group.

All of them were new to the SPRED group at some time, and several joined only recently, Hess reminded them. Martha, one of the friends, came for the very first time that night.

But with time, and effort, and trust and patience, they would learn to become friends, and even fall in love, Hess told them. That’s what happens when people become one in the Lord.

She reminded them about when they moved into this space, created just for SPRED, and Father James McCarthy, director of the SPRED Program, blessed it, and Bishop Timothy Lyne blessed the participants with holy water. As she spoke, she held the sacred oil for the group to smell, and sprinkled them with holy water. Then she reminded them how God made them one in baptism.

Hess then reinforced the message by quoting the Bible: “Jesus prays to his Father, ‘Father, I have given them the glory you gave me that they may be one as we are one.” (John 17: 22-23)

After a short reflection, the group listens to a song together, then sings it, and finally stands and moves to the music.

When the music ended, the group broke up, moving back to the activity area to set the table to share food and drinks, served on glass dishes with metal silverware and cloth napkins before finally saying good night.

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