Diocese’s first vicar for Hispanic ministry celebrating golden jubilee
“Life comes at you fast, and you just don’t think it’s going to happen that way, but it sure does,” said Msgr. Michael Schmied, who celebrated his golden jubilee on May 15. “I live so much in the present that that’s where I am, that’s what’s happening, that’s where I both suffer and rejoice. So that’s been the pattern. So here you are, wow, at 50.”
Msgr. Schmied was baptized at St. Benedict Church, Richmond, in 1946. His family eventually became members of St. Bridget.
The priest said his family attended Mass every Sunday, and he and his siblings attended St. Bridget School.
It was in watching the parish priests celebrate Mass on Sunday and at school that Msgr. Schmied first felt the call to priesthood.
“The priest was so much shrouded in mystery between the Latin liturgy and so on, but it certainly just stood out as someone doing something important and good,” he recalled.
Learning experiences
When St. John Vianney Minor Seminary in Richmond opened in 1960, Msgr. Schmied attended it for high school. After graduating, he went to St. Charles College in Catonsville, Maryland, which was part of St. Mary’s Seminary and University in Baltimore at that time. He then attended St. Mary’s Seminary for philosophy and then graduate school for theology.
“The minor seminary at St. John’s at that time, boy, we had some outstanding priests there, and I’d say as well in the seminary system in Baltimore. I think I had a great, excellent education all around,” he said of his formation.
On May 15, 1971, Msgr. Schmied was ordained a priest of the Diocese of Richmond, which at that time included northern Virginia, by Bishop John J. Russell.
He was assigned to Blessed Sacrament, Norfolk, as associate pastor in 1971 and then served in that role at Our Lady of Nazareth, Roanoke, from 1971-1974. He was pastor of St. Gerard, Roanoke, from 1974-1977.
After serving as pastor of St. Elizabeth, Richmond, from 1977-1987, Msgr. Schmied was approved for a sabbatical by Bishop Walter F. Sullivan to travel to Central America.
“I had become increasingly aware and concerned about what was going on in Central America, and I guess finally it was the death of Archbishop Romero, killed at the altar during the civil war in El Salvador, that made me decide,” Msgr. Schmied said. “Not that I knew any Spanish at the time, but I was just concerned about the state, the life, the pain, of the Church there, and so that’s when I decided to go.”
He traveled to El Salvador with a good friend, Xavierian Brother Art Caliman, who had worked in the diocesan Office of Peace and Justice. For two years, they traveled around the country, learning the language and accompanying the locals.
“It was almost to help protect them, protect the local peasant population, from the pretty oppressive government and military forces that considered peasants as the guerilla, the enemy forces, what have you,” he explained, calling his time there “a learning experience, a challenging experience, a hard experience.”
Highlights, challenges
Msgr. Schmied returned to the Diocese of Richmond in 1988 and became pastor of St. Joseph, Petersburg, where he stayed until 1995. He then went to Mexico and to the Mexican American Cultural Center in San Antonio to continue learning Spanish.
As the priest was becoming pastor of St. Augustine, Richmond, in 1996, Bishop Sullivan appointed him as the Richmond Diocese’s first vicar for Hispanic ministry.
“That was the real beginning of Hispanic ministry in the diocese,” he said. “I was in that position for 10 years.”
Having served in all three of the diocese’s vicariates, the priest experienced the diversity of many cultures of faith in Virginia.
“Although certainly I grew up in a lily-white school and Church environment, the difference of people culturally, color-wise and culturally – when I say that I mean food, music, style – it just was attractive to me, and I’ve certainly been enriched by it,” he said.
Of his assignments, Msgr. Schmied said that “each parish was significant, had its highlights, its challenges.”
The jubilarian noted the Gospel he chose for his first Mass, Luke 4: “The spirit of God is upon me, has enlightened me to preach Good News to the poor, sight to the blind, liberty to captives, freedom to the oppressed, to proclaim God’s favor.”
“To do that has not always been easy,” he said. “There’s reticence on the part of some and even not just reticence, reluctance, but even resistance to hear the Good News. Some get adjusted to the way things are and don’t see much hope. So I’ve always known great hope in the Gospel, the Good News.”
People-focused
Despite the challenges, Msgr. Schmied said that “just about everything” about his vocation as a priest has brought him joy.
“And that is to say people — just real people who are not in church seven days a week, but who live ordinary lives, to help them or to celebrate with them, to affirm within them the reality of God and God’s work,” he said. “Celebrating the liturgy, the sacraments. The sacramental life with folks has been just rich, rich, rich.”
For Msgr. Schmied, priesthood has “always been a people-focused thing,” an important part of which has been service in the world and getting close to the people to whom he ministers.
“We used to say then, ‘Get out of the sacristy and get into the streets. Get into people’s lives,’” he said, noting Pope Francis’ term of meeting people in the margins, or peripheries.
“The shepherd, like Pope Francis says, needs to smell like the sheep. That closeness has just joy to it. The priest is able to get so close if you choose to do so, and I tried to do so, and I was rewarded for doing so.”
A time for reconnecting
After retiring from active ministry in 2015, Msgr. Schmied said he has been reconnecting with his six siblings and old friends.
“Being so active in parish life, it really cut back a lot of my family life and relations with my siblings… as well as older friends and priests from other dioceses I was in school with,” he said. “So it’s given me the time for connection and enjoying those relationships.”
Although the priest said he has done “minimal weekend work” since retiring, he has returned to St. Augustine for funerals and some weddings and baptisms.
And, of course, prayer continues to be an important part of Msgr. Schmied’s life.
“I’m pretty faithful to the liturgy of the hours, which I can do quite easily and do joyfully morning, noon and night,” he said.
Almost every year since ordination, Msgr. Schmied has gone on Advent retreat, and he has picked his guitar back up after 40 years. He took a river tour from Berlin to Prague with a former parishioner from St. Augustine a few years ago.
He walks several miles each day with his Australian Cattle Dog, Sarai, an activity which the jubilarian has found to be a “great meditative, contemplative prayer and reflection time” in addition to healthy exercise for them both.
“I love to see her smelling the roses, and I smell them, too,” he said.
On May 25, Msgr. Schmied concelebrated the daily Mass at the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, Richmond, with five of his brother priests from the 1971 ordination class.
Still the same
While they try to get together around their anniversary date, Msgr. Schmied said he has an “annual ritual” of his own for the occasion.
“Every year since ordination, on the weekend of my anniversary, I’ve always pulled out the original homily that I gave at my first Mass. I reread it, check it out, to see if it still makes sense, if I’m still in line with that, if things have changed much. But no,” he said. “I’m still the same. Life has certainly changed in so many ways, but the mission, the vision, the work, is still the same.”