Letter to St. Thomas Aquinas Church from Padre German
Navarro, pastor of the church of Dulce Nombre de María, Dulce Nombre de Copán,
Honduras.
Dulce Nombre de Copán,
25 October 2017: “The Family; House and school of love”
We thank God that we share the same heaven of hope, the joys
of the Gospel in the sorrowful lands, wreaked by mire of corruption, violence,
drug-trafficking, among other things; pilgrims of peace amidst the debris of
ecological disasters, contaminated rivers, mountaintops chopped off by human
ambition. We proclaim our hymn of faith in the midst of migrants crossing walls
and on death trains, leaving their children enveloped in hope but nourished in
anemia with their households broken by anxiety, loneliness, and disintegration.
Esteemed sister parish of St. Thomas, thank you for your
solidarity; with your generous help we are a parish which promotes the mission
of evangelization and of charity with those most in need. You are Good News and
from a humble silence you make present the Reign of God in our midst. And more:
the manner you have of sharing and serving arouse in many of our parishioners
the desire to give themselves. The tenderness of God is flourishing, as from
their poverty they give part of their lives to assist the sick, the elderly,
and the widows. Thank you, sisters and brothers, for evangelizing us through
your charity.
You, in the person of Deacon Juancito [John Donaghy], are
missionaries. St. Thomas as a parish reaches the farthest crossroads of the
parish. There [our parish] is embraced and animated by the face of God; it is
supported with the healing and liberating embrace of mercy; there the tears of
those who are mourning are wiped away, helping them to contemplate the heaven
of the resurrection in their passage as pilgrims from death to life, from violence
to the ways of peace, from the walls of squalor and egoism to the bridge of
fraternity where we celebrate together and share the table, with the tablecloth
of solidarity and the providence of God. You are here with us, singing in our
choirs, going with our missionaries of mercy, with our catechists and the
children who share with us their desire to grow. Thanks for your part in our
family.
Let us continue evangelizing – Christ crucified, who has
been raised, waits for us in the Galilee of our families, who live in
loneliness, abandoned, in young people without a future horizon. Jesus waits
for us in the monotonous roads of everyday, which makes us easy prisoners of depression,
violence, alcohol, drugs, and human trafficking. We keep quiet, not
communicating to our parishes that in the desert of our hearts, nettled by
egoism and greed, there is still present the New Heaven and the New Earth which
can put us on the path to the peace to the peaceful sources, even though we
happen to pass through the bludgeons of pride, indifference, corruption, and
even hypocrisy.
My esteemed sisters and brothers, the parish of Dulce Nombre
de María – from its commitment and hope – we await you. We can count on the
shelter of friendship, with hearts beating in many homes with a rhythm in
harmony with the heartbeat of our Creator; we can count on the hands of the
worker who offer you hot tortillas and refried beans as well as the fraternal
coffee of sharing and celebration.
Don’t let the news in the mass media hold you back; many
times the means of social communication don’t manage to understand the life of
our people which doesn’t interest them at all. Let us continue walking
together, evangelizing, passing through the mire of pain, sorrow, and darkness,
leaving on every face the divine spark which regenerates – which God alone can
do. God counts on you and us.
I send cordial greetings to Father Jon and every one of our
brothers and sisters who have visited us. We hold your faces and your gestures
in our hearts. Again thank you for having been here with is and teaching us to evangelize
with a silent evangelization.
May we, as pilgrims in this world, share very soon in the
wedding feast of the Lamb, where there are no one and no one needs a visa – all
we need is to wear the festive garment, that is to say, clothed with humility,
mercy, and seeing us always as sisters and brothers, children of the same
Father. There where we will be illumined by truth and justice and where we dance
to the rhythm of the joy with the fragrance of eternal love.
Many thanks for everything.
Attentively,
German Navarro
Pastor, Dulce Nombre de María
Honduras
----
Loosely translated by John Donaghy.
The photo is of Padre German giving a rosary to one of the missionaries. Each missionary was given a cross and a rosary to be given to people they visited during their visits to homes in the villages where they were sent.
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