When it came time to select a project to benefit from Lenten almsgiving at Holy Cross Parish in Deerfield this year, parish leaders turned their sights towards a population that many people don’t know need help: veterans.
The parish is raising money to help support “Coming Home” retreats held at Bellarmine Jesuit Retreat House in Barrington twice each year. The retreats for veterans and their adult family members include talks, small group discussions and an interfaith service focused on forgiveness and healing.
Deacon Kevin Garvey, a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps who retired as a colonel, said he was among the group that came together to plan the retreats in 2013 and 2014. He knows of several veterans in the parish, he said, but others aren’t aware of how many there are in the community.
“It’s like an iceberg,” Garvey said. “People might know there are some veterans around, but that’s it.”
At the same time, he said, veterans are often reluctant to talk about their time in the service.
“It’s under the surface,” he said.
Garvey said he believes many people want to support veterans.
“It’s just that a lot of folks don’t know what they can do to support folks,” he said.
The almsgiving project aims to support the retreats, which are free to participants, and also provide a visual reminder of the support parishioners offer veterans. Those who make donations can post a flag with the name of a veteran they want to remember in the parish gathering space; Garvey posted a flag with the name of his father, a veteran of the D-Day invasion of Normandy.
They also can plant a flag outdoors for passersby to see.
Garvey said that, like many veterans, his father didn’t share much about his wartime experiences for most of his life, telling only a little bit just before he died.
Jesuit Father Michael Sparough said he got the idea for the retreats after attending a talk for veterans by Father Matt Foley, then pastor of St. James Parish in Arlington Heights and a former military chaplain who served in the Middle East.
Foley talked about the gap in understanding between those who served and civilians at home, and how difficult it could be to find a place where they could share their stories without judgment, Sparough said.
The daylong retreats are open to all veterans, no matter how long ago they left the service, and their adult family members, and they are meant to allow veterans and their loved ones to share their experiences and stories with others who will understand and not judge.
“I’m a Vietnam era vet, when I left the military in 1968, we were not looked on favorably as veterans,” said Dave Harman, who helped start the retreats and still helps with them. “You didn’t want to say anything about your service to your civilian world. You go from mission-focused to corporate-focused and money-focused jobs.”
Harman, an Air Force veteran, transported wounded service members by air from Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War.
Teresa Larson first came to the retreat as a participant with her husband, Don, a Marine Corps veteran. She asked her husband several times if he wanted to go to the retreat after Harman and another of the organizers, retired Army Major Gen. Emile Bataille, came to their parish in Huntley to tell people about the retreats.
When he said yes, she said, she joined him, and later started working at the retreat house. She has since retired, but she still helps with the retreats.
“The retreat was very beneficial for both of us,” Larson said. “Don is a disabled veteran and he has some issues, and he related best to people who have had military experience. We don’t live in a military town, and it is difficult to relate sometimes.”
That goes for family members as well, she said.
Sparough said the key is for veterans to be able to talk without feeling that they are being judged, because they have experienced things that civilians haven’t.
“What we wanted to do was make it an interfaith retreat, not specifically Catholic or Christian, but spiritual, but calling on God each from their own faith tradition to be able to address what has become known as ‘moral injury,’ the invisible wounds from war,” he said.
“Moral injury” is defined as what happens when someone participates in, is subject to or witnesses something that violates their deeply held moral code.
Many veterans who suffer from moral injury have a hard time talking about it, Sparough said, so the retreat center shares information about the retreat through veterans organizations and other groups.
“One of the things that makes recruitment difficult and is a key to the retreat is that the nature of the military is that you’re taught to be strong,” he said. “Feelings often have to be put aside for the sake of the mission. There’s a strong formation going into the military; there’s not a strong formation coming out.”
Father Peter Samborski, Holy Cross pastor, said the project is not political; it was planned long before the U.S. and Israel began bombing Iran on Feb. 28. It is dedicated to helping people who have given of themselves in service to the country.
“We have some veteran parishioners ourselves who have devoted their lives to serving people,” Samborski said. “We can serve in different ways, as a priest, as a physician, as a lawyer, or serve our country in the military.”
As of the fourth week of Lent, the project had raised about $15,000.
That money will support Coming Home retreats at Bellarmine Jesuit Retreat House and in Huntsville, Alabama, where Bataille moved and started the program, and Oceanside, California, where Franciscan Father Ed McKenzie, a Vietnam veteran who helped organize the program in Barrington, now serves.
For more information on the Coming Home retreats, visit jesuitretreat.org.