How can I preach the Passion among the poor?

This afternoon I will go to an aldea where I have often spent Good Friday, Debajiados.

To get there you have to go up a mountain and then down the other side. It’s about 50 minutes from here in Plan Grande and so I asked a neighbor to help with the driving. 

It is a small poor remote community that at this point does not have a Delegate of the Word to lead celebrations (though there is one in formation.) There was a young man who was in formation to be a communion minister, but he died of pneumonia, leaving his wife and four kids. Recently, the only delegate suddenly left the community,

But they are trying to live their faith. A young woman is in formation to become a catechist. Two young men (including the oldest son of the man who died of pneumonia) were confirmed this past February. 

I visited several times before I was ordained a deacon, the first time on a rainy December Sunday, going down to the church – on a “macho”. The second time, Good Friday, 2016, I took communion to a couple who lived far from the church, riding on a donkey.

I also helped with the funeral of a young girl from the community, accompanying the community to Mass and burial in a village the other side of the mountain. 

How to preach here is a serious question. 

As I prayed this morning one image came to me – suggested by the first two readings of the Good Friday Liturgy: the powerful fragility of Jesus crucified, the weakness of the Cross. 

Is there any image that better reflect the sad reality of the poor and that also give hope by reminding us of the transformative power of the Cross of Jesus and the resurrected Jesus, with his wounds?

 

from Esquipulas

This image of the suffering God reminds us that Jesus identified himself with the suffering and when we look on the faces of the poor we are looking on the faces of Christ Jesus who suffered and died with and for us. 

Many years ago I learned a famous crucifixion retablo of Mathias Grüenwald in the chapel of a hospital of people suffering from a disease that felt pustules on the skin. Jesus on the cross bears the same wounds.

There are other images of the crucified Christ identified with the suffering and persecuted. Most notable is Marc Chagall's the White Crucifixion where Jesus identifies with the Jews suffering pogroms in Russia. 

There is also Fritz Eichenberg's The Black Crucifixion

All these point to the reality of the identification of God with the suffering of this world.

This is very clear in the Holy Week liturgies. 

As Saint Óscar Romero, reflecting on the Suffering Servant Songs in Isaiah that we have been hearing this week.

The Servant of Yahweh is so closely identified with the people that biblical interpreters cannot really tell whether the Servant of Yahweh announced by Isaiah is the suffering people or the Christ who comes to redeem them.

Jon Sobrino, SJ, Salvadoran theologian and friend of Monseñor Romero, also notes this identification. of the crucified Christ and the crucified of this world.

The crucified peoples of the world are today’s Suffering Servant, innocent but hidden away, “though he had done no wrong nor spoken any falsehood.” If the Servant does not merit such treatment, then it means that we have unjustly inflicted it on him: “He was pierced for our offenses, crushed for our sins.” The Suffering Servant proclaims the truth about the crucified people, and the truth about their executioners. In the crucified people, we can and must see ourselves. As in an inverted mirror, we can see who and what we truly are by looking at what we have produced. Today the crucified people embody the scandalous and prophetic presence of Jesus among us.

So, what can I do today but remind the people (and myself) that we have a God who suffers with us so that suffering can be transformed by the power of God – both in our personal lives and in our world.