St. Thomas is here

Not exactly. But six students from St. Thomas Aquinas Church and Catholic Center are here in Honduras for ten days. They arrived on Friday night in the San Pedro Sula airport.

Having visitors is a lot of work – but it’s a great chance to share the beauty of the people here and offer them a chance to get to know people and “help” in some small ways.

The group will work with kids on Monday and Tuesday here in Santa Rosa de Copán and spend Wednesday and Thursday in the village of El Zapote de Santa Rosa building toilets and showers for the church center there that we’re using for training sessions in the parish.

But most of the time is getting to know the people and the situation here in Santa Rosa.

Saturday night was an example. We were planning to go to the evening Mass in the parish of Our Lady of Fatima in the lower part of Santa Rosa. We got there only to find out that the Mass wouldn’t be till later that evening, but Erlin, a university students active in that parish, showed up as planned and we decided to go and eat baleadas – a Honduran fast food of flour tortillas, refried beans, cream, cheese, and what ever else you want to put inside. We went and then his mother, sister, and two cousins arrived. We sat around the plastic tables in the “restaurant” (really the first floor of someone’s house) and ate and talked for almost two hours – twelve of us around a table.

We didn’t go to the Mass because I thought it best that the group get some sleep since they had been traveling all Friday an Saturday morning. But we had sat around a table – speaking both fluently and haltingly in Spanish – sharing not only food but life. It was a real sign of table fellowship, table solidarity – a type of pre-Eucharist.

In a real sense this is what the relationship between Saint Thomas and Santa Rosa de Copán is about – recognizing our relatedness.

Sunday afternoon we went to the poor neighborhood of the Colonia Divina Providencia (the Divine Providence neighborhood). I have been going to the kindergarten in the area since I got here. The community was inaugurating their new community center and the project that had brought electricity to the neighborhood.

Through money that friends had sent me I was able to contribute a thousand dollars to the community center. But most of the funding came from Canada, through the help of a group from Québec called Solidarity-Sur (Solidarity with the south). Yet the inspiration for the community center (and the workshops that are being funded by Canada) is Sor Ines Cornago, a short Spanish Franciscan sister who lived up the street from me. Sor Maria Jesús, another Spanish Franciscan, helped arrange the project that brought the community electricity.

After the ceremonies the people danced. It was great to see Canadians, folks from the US, a Spanish sister, and Hondurans dancing and celebrating together. Another sign of the Kingdom – where rich and poor, people from many nations, share and celebrate together.

And so every night as we gathered together, the group from St. Thomas prayed the Lord’s Prayer – “Thy Kingdom come.” And in some small ways the Reign of God is showing signs of His presence among us.