December 3, 2024 // Diocese

‘This Is the Charism of Our Parish’

Paula Lent

Holy Cross Church Helps Afghan Family Resettle in South Bend

Who is my neighbor? This question, posed to Jesus in Luke’s Gospel, leads to the parable of the Good Samaritan – a parable that conveys that a neighbor is one who steps outside his or her comfort zone and shows mercy and care without discrimination. As Christians, we are all called to serve our neighbors, and for members of Holy Cross Parish in South Bend, embracing this call is a foundational part of their identity. 

The Constitution of the Congregation of Holy Cross says: “Christ was anointed to bring good news to the poor, release for prisoners, sight for the blind, restoration for every broken victim. Our efforts, which are His, reach out to the afflicted and in a preferential way to the poor and the oppressed. We come not just as servants but as their neighbors, to be with them and of them.” 

Holy Cross parishioner Katy Lichon reflected on how each institution and parish led by the Congregation of Holy Cross uniquely lives out this charism, telling Today’s Catholic: “Notre Dame is not St. Mary’s, is not Holy Cross College, is not King’s College, right? … What does it mean to be Holy Cross?

It actually means something really beautiful in the sense that it means to meet the needs in a local way. So that’s why Holy Cross Parish is not the same as St. Adalbert; it’s not the same mission as Christ the King; and it’s not the same mission as St. Joe down the street. … That’s why the places look different, because the congregation really wants to take on the charisms, not loosely, but also take on the charisms of their particular population, which is why it can look different in many different ways. … So, our parish really embodies that, and our pastors always have, which is: that we serve the people that God has sent us as neighbors.” 

This has played out in numerous ways throughout the years, most recently as the parish has worked with Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend and Neighbor to Neighbor to support an Afghan family since 2022. Lichon said, “Serving a Muslim family who are our neighbors is exactly what we’re called to do.” 

In 2021, Mohammad and Yasmin Dawood Naseebzai had their lives turned upside down when they were unexpectedly forced to evacuate their homeland in less than 10 hours. With their five young children, they sat with more than 400 other people on the floor of a military transport plane that took them to Germany. Eventually, the family came to the United States, staying in an immigration camp with 20,000 people for several months before they were sent to South Bend. 

According to Lichon, in response to the sudden increase of Afghan refugees, Catholic Charities in South Bend began to partner with parishes and other organizations in order to communally meet the needs of the refugees. This is how Holy Cross Parish specifically became involved with serving the Dawood Naseebzai family. 

“We had about three weeks to find the family a home and completely furnish the home,” Lichon recalled. They received help with finding the home, but when it came to furnishing it, “that was tasked to us as a parish, and so it was just really beautiful,” she said. 

Beautiful, but not without some learning moments.

“I think I drove the pastor bananas because we didn’t think it through,” Lichon told Today’s Catholic. “We decided to make a quick wish list of everything that goes in a house, right? From spatulas to a coffee maker to beds – the whole thing. And then we had everything delivered to the parish center. So, our poor pastor was living in, like, this fort of boxes, and every day Amazon brought like 50 things,” she remembered. “And so, if we ever do this again, we won’t have things delivered to the parish center.”

“We were able within three weeks to completely furnish a home from top to bottom. And we had about two days to set it up. And it worked out beautifully,” Lichon said. “The donations of furniture and food and time – it just was the multiplication of the fish and loaves for sure. And it came together, and the house was just beautiful, like a truly exceptionally beautiful and warm and welcoming home.”

The Dawood Naseebzai family, which has welcomed two children since moving in, continues to love the home. Mohammad told Today’s Catholic, “When I come to my house, everything is so nice. Bed, bedroom, house, everything is so nice. So nice to be there.” 

The move, which brought together more than 40 volunteers ranging from “seasoned parishioners” all the way down to high schoolers, “was just really beautiful,” Lichon said, due to the amount of love that was poured out by the parish, friends, family, and neighbors in order to serve the family. But that was only the beginning, and the journey the family and community have been on together has involved mutual humility, sacrifice, and learning how to love well. 

For the parish, learning to adjust to better love one’s neighbor began shortly after the move. 

“So, we set up this beautiful home in the way that I think many of us, well, the way our parish thought it would be best – functional. After a week, coming in, I just cracked up laughing because the family had moved so many things,” Lichon shared. “They were on the floor in the living room most of the time. So, it’s so funny how we come in and we create a home that we think, you know, the feng shui, and this is where the things go … and it was completely redone by the family in a more communal way than maybe I had laid it out.”

“They don’t need a dining room table. They’re going to sit on the floor. That’s their way of life,” echoed fellow parishioner Doug Baumgartner, who spoke with Today’s Catholic along with Lichon. 

Baumgartner, who has been a parishioner at Holy Cross for more than 40 years, and who spent his career working at Martin’s Supermarket, was newly retired when the family arrived in South Bend. He said he was “looking for things to do that were constructive” when the initial requests for help came out. After helping with the home, Baumgartner began to serve the family by giving them rides to appointments around town.

“There wasn’t a lot of communication in those first rides because they couldn’t communicate with me, and I couldn’t communicate with them. I just knew where to take them and made that work – sometimes, you know, just hand signs or whatever: ‘Do you want this or that?’” he said. 

Lichon, who also occasionally helped with rides, recalled the first trips the family took to the grocery store.

“The first week they were here, they went to Meijer, and it was overwhelming and disappointing in the sense of, it wasn’t exactly what they were looking for,” she told Today’s Catholic, empathizing with the family’s experience of culture shock. Fortunately, Baumgartner was able to quickly find specialty grocery stores that better suited the family’s needs, and where Mohammad, who is very warm, friendly, and upbeat, was quick to make a friend. Baumgartner confessed, though, that “Martin’s was not their first choice for groceries, so that was a struggle for me. … But I learned to appreciate what they were after.” 

Aside from the mutual learning curve, beautiful moments of bonding began early. When the family arrived, both Yasmin and Lichon were pregnant, and Lichon remembers, “Every time I’d go over there, they would pull everything out of the cupboard that they could to serve me,” she said. “They have been nothing but unbelievably gracious.” Reflecting further, Lichon said, “Despite all of these differences, here is a family that knows they needed to put their trust in us, and they did.”

She also recalled a beautiful moment of unity, when she and Yasmin were both nursing their infants: “[We] could not speak at all to each other, but we’re sitting here, both nursing these babies, and very different, right? She is completely covered. I’m in jeans and a button down. I mean, two totally different women from two totally different states of life, and yet, it is all the commonalities that bind us, for sure.” 

Throughout the past two years, there have been ample opportunities for further bonding. These have included Baumgartner experiencing his first Ramadan celebration with the family (“They can have water and that’s it for the day. To do that for 30 days, that makes Lent sound easy,” he shared), and celebrating birthdays together (including celebrating the family’s oldest daughter’s 10th birthday two years in a row due to an initial documentation issue surrounding her age). 

Baumgartner, who knows every family member’s birthday month, sounded like a proud relative when he listed off each child’s name and age to Today’s Catholic, boasting about their accomplishments and personalities. The children are currently receiving tutoring due to the generosity of volunteers, and speaking of the oldest boy, who’s in first grade, Baumgartner proudly shared, “I’m told that he’s very brilliant.  A couple of tutors that I know have told me that he is a very smart boy.” 

“The kids are delightful,” Lichon echoed. “The oldest, particularly, is so brave … but just warm and hopeful and just a gift.”

Baumgartner also noted that the whole family is “so welcoming, friendly, and grateful. ‘Thank you’ comes out of [Yasmin’s] mouth constantly – of all of them.”

Although loving service sometimes involved getting up at 5 a.m. to take Mohammad to work before he got his license and a car, or responding to an unexpected request to take the kids to school when they missed the bus one day, by and large both Baumgartner and Lichon emphasize the blessing that being neighbors with the Dawood Naseebzai family has been. 

Becoming neighbors with the family has “definitely taken me out of my comfort zone,” Baumgartner shared. “[But] they are so friendly, so grateful, they’ve made it easier.” 

“God has provided in infinite ways,” Lichon said of the extended community that has come together to serve the family, including their literal neighbors who are “infinitely helpful, too.”

And reflecting on what the experience has meant for the parish, Lichon shared: “This is a parish effort to do exactly what God has called us to do. … This is not, you know, [us] saving anyone. As Pope Francis says, this is an encounter at its finest, and we’ve all gotten better because of it. … This is the charism of our parish.”