Accident – Death – Obituary News :
As Father Evan Ponton prepared to celebrate daily Mass at the Shrine of the Little Flower in Northeast Baltimore on Feb. 21, he heard a loud bang and a car horn and realized an accident had occurred outside.
“I walked out the door and it took me a minute to get my bearings and realize it was really bad,” he said on Feb. 23. He also realized he was the first person on the scene in the 3500 block of Bel Air Road. According to the Baltimore Banner, a spokesman for the Baltimore City Fire Department said investigators believe one car struck three others.
Father Ponton noticed that there was a child in a car seat in the back seat of a badly crumpled vehicle. The child was moving and covered in blood but appeared to be trapped. The priest opened the door, took out the child, and laid him on the grass in front of the church.
He also saw a woman, later identified as Sharon Worsham, 68, the child’s grandmother, trapped in the car. He also found the body of another child on the street, later identified as nine-year-old Xavier Dukes. Both were reportedly pronounced dead at the scene.
At this time the neighbors started coming out. Father Ponton ran into the church to find a cloth on the street to cover the body.
“The first cloth I found was one that had been hung over a crucifix for Lent,” he said of the custom of covering crucifixes and other images during the penitential period. He said it was somehow appropriate that the purple cloth that had covered the image of Jesus would now be used to give some dignity to the sacrifice.
He said he did some crowd control “to maintain some calm and respect for the situation” until emergency vehicles arrived.
Ministry of Presence
He said service wasn’t his first thought when he pulled the child from the car. “I realized it when I put the linen over the body.”
He noted that he didn’t know at the time whether the family was Catholic, and that the church doesn’t perform last rites for those who have already died anyway, but he thought of some prayers he could say.
“In this case, my ministry was to pray and try to provide some calm and reassurance in a deeply chaotic moment. We call this a ministry of presence – a term we use often,” said Father Ponton. He started by asking himself how he could help with any physical need and then moved on.
The Shrine of the Little Flower
The Shrine of the Little Flower is located at the apex of Bel Air Road in Northeast Baltimore and has sometimes been referred to as “the cathedral on the hill.”
“It’s very noticeable. There is a bus stop there,” he said. “It really is a landmark.”
A Moment of Transfiguration
In the days since the accident, Father Ponton has had some time to reflect and prepare for his sermon this weekend, when the gospel reading for the second Sunday of Lent will be Mark’s account of the Transfiguration.
In this passage, Jesus leads his disciples to the top of a hill on a beautiful day, but then Jesus predicts his impending death and resurrection.
Father Ponton said his experience responding to the accident was a “moment of transfiguration,” he experienced the shadow of death, but “God’s light is also there,” he said.
Community Support
He noted that in the Gospel Peter says, “Lord, it is good that we are here.”
“That was a profound sentence for me to pray with in a tragic situation, in this dark moment. I’m glad I was there at that moment, not as a hero or a saint. “I’m just glad that I was here at that moment and could provide a little pastoral care, prayer, and peace,” said Father Ponton.
He said eight students from nearby Catholic High School of Baltimore also witnessed the accident and its aftermath. The day after the accident, he spent some time at school talking to students and helping them process the accident.
Healing Breakfast
The congregation also helped their neighborhood cope with the impact of the crash with a prayer breakfast and church service on Saturday, Feb. 24.
The breakfast had been planned for several months as the Lumberjack Club at Archbishop Spalding High School in Severn, where Father Ponton previously served as chaplain, had planned to serve pancakes to those in need on the Little Flower campus.
The Lumberjack Club, Father Ponton said, is a fun club where some of the students “wear flannel and make pancakes” and they contacted him last fall about providing pancakes to needy people in the city. The event had to be postponed from last fall to February.
Coming Together
The breakfast, organized by Spalding student Patrick Kiely, was open to everyone in the neighborhood to experience healing together. Neighbors and other students were present. Father Patrick Carrion, parish priest of Shrine of the Little Flower, celebrated the Mass, and Archbishop William E. Lori greeted and encouraged people at the breakfast.
Father Ponton said the breakfast was a way for the people of God to be together and love their neighbors in the midst of great tragedy.
“If we cannot answer the ‘why’ question, we have no choice but to offer our prayers, our food, and our presence to one another,” he said. “There is nothing better we can do. When the church functions as it should, here’s what happens.”
Reflection and Support
He said he later discovered that the deceased woman was a member of a church led by Rev. Tim Tooten, who happened to be a friend of his from when they were both studying at the Ecumenical Institute at St. Mary’s Seminary University at Roland Park.
Father Ponton said the timing of this accident was poignant because exactly three years ago, in the same week as the Feast of the Transfiguration and in his first year as a priest, he celebrated his first funeral for someone who had died by suicide in the case of a high school student. “It was one of those coming-of-age moments as a priest. I feel something similar in this situation.”
He said those two life-changing moments as a priest, centered around tragedy, were opportunities for him to “emotionally and spiritually process how God has gifted me with these moments of sharing with families and families in times of truly deep grief communities could be together.”
Email Christopher Gunty at [email protected].
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