Deacon Pedro Maldonado

When Booze Had All But Destroyed Him He Asked God to End His Life- Soon After He Started to Live

EDITOR'S NOTE: Our series celebrating the different ways in which Oklahoma Catholics heard and answered the call to serve the Church continues during  this Centennial year of the Diocese of Oklahoma.

My father grew up on a ranch in the state of Coahuila, Mexico and my mother and both of Carmen’s parents were from Matamoros, just across the border from Brownsville. Our parents immigrated in the 1920s, Carmen’s to nearby San Benito, TX and mine to Tivoli near Corpus Christi. We were poor farmworkers but my family was far poorer than Carmen’s. They at least had a enough to eat while my family often ran out of food and had to go days without eating until the next payday.  For two years my family worked on the Chapman Ranch where we lived in a drafty, unheated shack and were paid only $5 per week in coupons redeemable only in Mr. Chapman’s store. When I was 10 we moved to Robstown, TX which was a bad, violent town—they had a murder about every week! We spent summers there and did migrant farm work in West and North Texas in the winter. I began first grade when I was six, but couldn’t attend much due to moving so much, so every year I kept getting re-enrolled in first grade. I began second grade when I was 14, but then my formal education ended. Carmen, on the other hand, had made it through 10th grade when her family moved temporarily to Robstown from San Benito.

Growing up I suffered a lot of discrimination. I kept thinking how can they sing so beautifully in Church and say they are good Christians and then turn around and treat me so badly just because I am Mexican. Once we had to leave a restaurant because they didn’t serve Mexicans and when my father protested they threatened to call the police. My mother was very frightened and when they pointed out the “No Mexicans Served Here” sign I felt so cheap and small.

Carmen and I fell in love and got married in 1950. I was 17 and she was 16. We had 10 children, eight of which are still living. I was still doing migrant farm work when we came to Hobart, OK to pick cotton in 1960. I had begun drinking at 16 and by age 28 I was such a bad alcoholic that I drank up all our money and didn’t have enough left to return to Robstown. So we stayed in Hobart. In Hobart I have done all kinds of farm work and construction work. We got married in the Church in Hobart in 1963.

Alcohol continued to have a devastating effect on our family. In 1983 one of my sons was killed in an alcohol related accident and by then I was tired of how I was living but unable to quit drinking. One day it hit me so hard that I stopped my truck on a county road, got on my knees and begged God to take away my life. Then about a week later I woke up with severe pain in my legs—gout—and I was in bed and on crutches for the next six months. And then Sisters Eva and Isabel from Altus gave me an application for a Cursillo. I said I couldn’t afford it and (even though there is no charge for Cursillos) a check for $300 from the parish arrived in the mail. I said I had too much pain in my legs and the Sisters said the pain would go away. So I went and became a changed man. God gave me the power to quit drinking and I haven’t drank at all in the 20 years since then.

But giving up drink was just the beginning. I got very involved in the Spanish Cursillo team and gave testimonials all over the state until 1989 when I entered formation for the permanent diaconate, something I had been praying about ever since that life-changing Cursillo in 1985. They made special arrangements for my training because of my lack of schooling. I was ordained in 1992 and served in Hobart for three years, but was not being used much because people knew about my past and had a hard time accepting that I had changed. Mainly I was just visiting the inmates at the reformatory in Granite and doing a Communion Service there twice a month. So in 1995 when Father Mike Vaught invited me to transfer to Clinton, I accepted and the Arch- bishop approved the change. We actually moved to Clinton in 1997 but also have kept our house in Hobart. Here in Clinton, in addition to my ongoing prison work at Granite, I preach twice a month, do baptisms, Quinceañeras and weddings outside of Mass. I led a Spanish Bible study for a few years, then worked with Renew and I am now considering starting Bible classes again. I visit the sick and lead rosaries, wakes and graveside funeral services. Even though I’m 73, the Archbishop and the priests in the area have encouraged me to continue to serve as long as I can because I am the only Spanish-speaking clergy in the area.

Ministry was hard for me at first because of my lack of education and for this I depend on Carmen a great deal. For instance, I write out my homilies in Spanish and Carmen writes out an English translation for me. Some of the priests who helped me in my ministry were Father Bruce Natsuhara and Father Mike Vaught. I admire and thank them. I don’t do things in ministry because I necessarily want to do them but rather because I know I should do them whether I want to or not. For example, no one wants to have to deal with suffering, but because I myself have experienced rejection, bigotry, poverty and loss, I know how it feels and so my heart goes out to others in pain and I feel obligated to do what I can to help. There is always good—even inside people who for whatever reason do not accept me—and so that’s what I try to look for in others, regardless of how things seem at the moment. My happiness, my life, my treasure are God, and my faith. I will serve God and his people for as long as God lets me.