Oblate of St. Francis de Sales Brother Mickey McGrath finds inspiration on Maryknoll immersion trips to Lakota lands in the U.S. and an AIDS clinic in Nairobi, Kenya.
In these stormy times of climate change and global unrest, Brother Mickey McGrath uses his talent as an artist and storyteller to connect people to each other and the beauty of creation.
The Oblate of St. Francis de Sales says he felt called to his vocation. Being a religious brother, he says, allows him the freedom to share his passion as an artist. “Beauty brings people’s hearts together,” he says. “Beauty is present where you are and in what you are looking at.”
Originally from Philadelphia, Brother McGrath lives in South Camden, New Jersey. He finds inspiration everywhere, and over the years has partnered with Maryknoll missioners to find new expression for his art. One instance took him to Nairobi, Kenya, and the work of Maryknoll Father Richard Bauer at the Eastern Deanery AIDS Relief Program (EDARP) for people living with HIV.
The plan was for him to create art for the waiting room for women who are HIV positive. The women come for prenatal care, receiving effective interventions to prevent the baby they carry from being infected.
“I asked Mickey to paint a mural of the Visitation, Mary and Elizabeth, both pregnant and comforting each other,” Father Bauer says. At Brother McGrath’s suggestion, Father Bauer invited youth to help with the murals.
“It was pure grace and transformation,” Father Bauer says. “On Monday, eight to 10 HIV-positive teenagers receiving treatment at the Maryknoll EDARP clinic came to help Mickey. He drew the outline of the Visitation, numbered the outlines, and the youth just jumped in and began painting.”
The Maryknoller says initially the teens were shy and quiet, adding that the stigma for HIV-positive people in so much of the world is still great. For teens, this stigma and discrimination can be paralyzing, he says.
“These youth jumped into the project, and I watched how the energy, confidence, and pure joy increased throughout the week,” Father Bauer says. “By Friday, they were behaving and acting like ‘regular’ teens — laughing, joking, horsing around, filled with life and hope and joy!”
The missioner continues, “Mickey and the kids were so excited they did another mural, in our men’s clinic for guys with HIV.”
Now five years later, every one of those teens is a peer mentor at EDARP. They help newly diagnosed HIV-positive teens adapt to their medicines and model for them self-confidence and pride, he says.
Brother McGrath remembers the experience as a healing one. He says, “Healing power comes from creating beauty together.”
A couple of years ago Brother McGrath participated in a weeklong Maryknoll immersion trip to Native American lands in South Dakota and Wyoming to learn about the past and present struggles of the Lakota people. Seeing the landscape and witnessing the way Native spirituality treats creation as a gift energizes Brother McGrath’s own spirituality. It wasn’t his first trip to the Lakota people. A few years earlier he had painted a mural for the St. Joseph’s Indian School in Chamberlain, South Dakota. The school was included in the more recent Maryknoll immersion trip itinerary.
One morning in Sioux Falls while Brother McGrath was praying the rosary in a garden, he was joined by local Indigenous leader and teacher Gary Cheeseman. Cheeseman began his own morning prayers, facing the rising sun in the east while drumming and chanting. Each man prayed in his own way that morning, and as Brother McGrath was saying his last “Hail Mary,” Cheeseman was finishing up at the same time.
“We are all one, we are all connected,” Brother McGrath says, reflecting on that moment. “We are related to each other, that fits in with Maryknoll spirit.”
Carolyn Trumble, a returned Maryknoll lay missioner who served in Brazil, is a mission education promoter based in Portland, Oregon.
Brother McGrath will offer a retreat sponsored by Maryknoll’s Mission Formation Program titled “The Earth Is Our Mother” on Sept. 14, 2024.
Featured Image: (Left to right) A young EDARP leader, Brother Mickey McGrath and Maryknoll Father Richard Bauer pose with the Visitation mural in Nairobi. (Courtesy of Richard Bauer/Kenya)
