Maryknoll missionary describes work that led to a lifetime of conversion

By Susan Bailey | CFP Correspondent

When Maryknoll Father Robert Jalbert went to East Africa in 1976 as a young missionary-in-training, he was excited about all he could offer to the poor.
“I went to East Africa for the first time thinking in my head that we have a lot here that I am going to be able to share with the people in Tanzania, and I am going to make a big difference in their lives, never even dreaming that that’s only one half of a relationship. Never dreaming or even thinking that the poor had something to offer me,” he said.
He would soon learn, beginning with Elizabeth, a faith-filled and blind elderly woman who had lost a leg. Her community, aware of how difficult it was for her to get to Mass, asked “Father Bob” to gather everyone at Elizabeth’s home to celebrate the liturgy. Elizabeth was so grateful that she offered him a precious gift of two eggs, which presented a dilemma to the priest: should he accept the eggs that he knew she needed far more than he, or should he accept her generosity? It was the first of many lessons in how to receive God gifts from the poor.
Father Jalbert recounted his self-described “lopsided” view of what it meant to relate to the poor: “I have things I am going to give to the poor and share with them and make their lives better; I am going to be happy, they’re going to be happy, end of story,” he said. “And what I discovered with Elizabeth was [that] the poor have a lot to offer me and anything that they do offer has little or no monetary value. But it has a spiritual value.”
He characterized how the people of Tanzania taught him their language, customs and traditions, such that he felt at home in their community.
“They gave me some of the basic tools I needed to go in and do the work that God sent me there to do,” he said.     “But first of all I had to remember that I was going in like a beggar with an empty bowl. And in that bowl they were going to put language and culture and customs.
“I had to begin by receiving. I had to begin by acknowledging my poverty. All they were giving me didn’t have any sort of monetary value at all. But it was a gift from them and Elizabeth’s two eggs were a symbol of that.         
    “Those two eggs were the beginning of my personal conversion/transformation story which continues today. You realize that God begins a process or journey of transformation and conversion that’s going to last for the rest of your life,” he said.
At present that work includes heading up the Church Engagement Division at Maryknoll. He and his team create and support a “culture of mission” with the U.S. Catholic community. In 2019 he will celebrate his 40th year as a missionary priest.  So those years have given Father Jalbert many rich ministry experiences to share with local parishes and schools in an effort to form communities of missionary disciples around the world.
The road to becoming a Maryknoll missionary priest was long and winding. Although he sensed a vocation at an early age, Father Jalbert was not ready to enter seminary after graduating from high school. Instead, the Southbridge native spent a semester at Assumption College in Worcester, dropping out when he realized it was not the right course for him. It was the mid-1960s, and losing his student deferment opened up the risk of being drafted into the Army to fight in the Vietnam War. To avoid this he enlisted in the Air Force; it was here where his life would take an interesting turn.    
“After basic training they discovered that I had ability with languages. They sent me to school to learn Russian for nine months,” said Father Jalbert.
His aptitude for foreign languages was cultivated during his elementary and high school years.
“I grew up in a French-Canadian parish in what used to be Notre Dame in Southbridge,” he said. “We grew up learning French from pre-school and kindergarten right through the fourth year of high school.”
After training and receiving a top secret clearance check, Father Jalbert was assigned to the Air Force Security Service where he would listen to Russian military traffic over the radio, write down what he heard in Russian shorthand and pass it along to his superiors. He served in Brindisi, Italy, and later in Northern Turkey on the Black Sea, just 40 miles from the Soviet border.
During his 15-month stint in Northern Turkey, he met a group of Italian Franciscan missionaries serving at a local parish, who would figure into his eventual formation as a missionary priest.
“In those 15 months I’d go down to their house at least once a week for a couple of days and we became very good friends,” he said.
After his discharge from the Air Force, Father Jalbert, 21, was ready to enter the seminary. The Diocese of Worcester sent him to Holy Apostles College Seminary in Cromwell, Connecticut, an institution for older vocations like himself. He came to realize the important added element to his priestly vocation after meeting a visiting Maryknoll priest.
“I found myself, after the conversation, drawn to thinking about becoming a missionary,” he said. “I began to realize the missionary dimension of priesthood which I felt called to most probably came from those Franciscan Italian missionaries that I met in Turkey.”
After being accepted into the Maryknoll community Father Jalbert was sent overseas.     
“My internship was for two years,” he said. “I spent those two years in Kenya and Tanzania. The older missionaries were our guides and our mentors.”
Father Jalbert was ordained a priest on May 19, 1979.
After 24 years in the field, he returned home to begin the second phase of his work with Maryknoll – to share with American Catholics not only what it is like to be a missionary, but how we are all called to this work in some capacity.
“We come back from overseas with all those experiences that we’ve had; we try to help the average Catholic in the pew to recognize that we are not the only missionaries in this world, but the people in the pews are missionaries because of their baptism. And that we’re all called to missionary life, which means to receive God’s love and to share that love and to share the Good News with others. This is the dual charism of our missionary life.”
The transition from living in East Africa to the United States is difficult but doable, he noted.
“One thing that I have learned is that when we come back home from overseas and stay home for a while, we realize that we no longer fit 100 percent in the United States and that we never will. And if I ever go back to East Africa I will never be 100 percent at home there either. That’s a part of our vocation that we have to be aware of,” he said.
Father Jalbert sums up his missionary work in one word: privilege.
“It’s a privilege to be able to have one foot in one culture and one foot in another culture and to be able to understand both of those cultures and to feel at home in those cultures. I enjoy very much what I am doing.

– You can listen to an interview with Father Jalbert as part of a Maryknoll Society podcast at https://maryknollsociety.org/mission-stories/episode-13-father-robert-jalbert/