A good Good Friday

A few weeks ago I had arranged to go to Debajiados for Good Friday. It’s one of the most remote villages and, if it has been raining, you can’t get in by car, even in four-wheel drive!

This morning about 7:15 I called Juan Ángel and asked him about the road and when they were going to begin the Stations. The road was fine and they had planned to start at 8:00. I had planned fro 9 or later. I almost panicked but he offered to put starting off until I arrived.

I arrived in 45 minutes – since the road was good and there was no traffic.

Entering the village I found Juan Ángel, his kids, and a woman preparing the stations. Later I found out that someone had broken up a few of the stations they had arranged earlier. (Someone said it was some local evangelicals.)

The stations started at about nine – with a nice crowd, including a surprising number of men and a lot of kids.

When we reached the church at the end of the stations at about 11, they decided to go straight into the celebration of the Passion.

The celebration was straight-forward, though I was moved by the veneration of the cross.

One thing I noted is how hard it is for most of the people in these aldeas [villages] to read. But then  I remember that many of these people have had little formal education. One rather articulate single twenty-three year old who read pretty well has only had two years of formal education. With so little, some do so much.

After a simple lunch I went with Juan angel to bring Communion to his parents who have been ill for several months and haven’t been able to get to church. No wonder. They live about 30 minutes from Debajiados by horse – up and down hills.

So the poor horse, named Payaso – the clown, carried Communion and me to the sick. 

I recognized Antonio, his father, who had been very active in the church in Debajiados. We talked, I shared prayer and Communion and then I left with Juan Ángel’s grandmother and some other relatives who were visiting. On the way out we found out that someone drowned in a nearby water hole. I ended up giving a number of folks a ride so that they could go to the village where the accident happened.

What is the meaning of this for me?

Today as I prepared for the Celebration of the Word I was struck by two passages which spoke to me of how God didn’t just suffer for us; in Jesus, God suffers with us.

In the letter to the Hebrews (3:16), the author characterizes Jesus as a high priest but 

“we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has similarly been tested in every way, yet without sin.”

Isaiah 53:4 speaks of the suffering servant in these words:

it was our pain that he bore, our sufferings he endured.

We do not have a God who is far from our sufferings, who does not share in them. We have a God who is with us in our suffering; that does not take away the pain but it may give us strength to struggle and hope.

Maybe this image I captured of a small cross on the road, amid the people's feet, sums it up well. Christ is here, looking at life from the ground up, seeing the worn and tired feet, but present - and vulnerable.

 In this way we are called to be a church that resembles Jesus, as Jon Sobrino writes:

To resemble Jesus is to reproduce the structure of his life. In gospel terms, the structure of Jesus’ life is a structure of incarnation, of becoming real flesh in real history. And Jesus’ life is structured in function of the fulfillment of a mission— the mission of proclaiming the good news of the Reign of God, inaugurating that Reign through all signs of every sort, and denouncing the fearsome reality of the anti-Reign. The structure of Jesus’ life meant taking on the sin of the world, and not just standing idly by looking at it from the outside. It meant taking on a sin that, today, surely, continues to manifest its greatest power in the fact that it puts millions of human beings to death. Finally, the structure of Jesus’ life meant rising again and raising again— having, and bestowing on others, life, hope, and gladness.

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The quote from Sobrino is found in his essay “The Samaritan Church and the Principle of Mercy,”
found in Christine M. Bochen, ed., The Way of Mercy. Orbis Books, pp. 60-61.

Day of the Cross and Honduran suffering

Today we celebrate the feast of the finding of the Cross - here in Honduras, as well in El Salvador and other Latin American countries. It used to be a feast on the Catholic liturgical calendar for the whole world but was suppressed since there is also the feast of the Holy Cross on September 14.

But here the feast is celebrated – and rightly so.

The Cross is for followers of Christ a sign of our salvation. But it is more. It is the sign of a God who does not look on suffering from afar, but shares in our sufferings.

In countries like Honduras this is a message that needs to be heard. Not only is Honduras the second poorest country in Latin America, but it is also perceived to be have the highest percentage of violent deaths per population in the world.

Lots of people are troubled by the high rate of violent deaths here, but we should be troubled at the slow death that many experience due to the massive poverty here.

And this poverty is preventable. But it will be costly since the structures here do not allow people to develop their capacities to live full human lives.

Education is one example. Schools are poorly equipped and education is only mandatory until sixth grade. After that, it is very difficult to get an education, especially if you live in the countryside. For example, in the parish of Dulce Nombre de María in four municipalities there are only five schools that offer classes for seventh through ninth grade, and there is only one high school.

If young people in the countryside want to study past sixth grade they have to travel each day or go live in a town where they can get the classes they need. Some parents make the effort so that they children can get an education, sending their children to live in towns like Santa Rosa where they either stay with relatives or find a boarding house. The young people may take day classes or night classes – and work during the day. Some may take weekend classes and so only have to stay one night in town.

That’s why programs like Maestro en Casa are so important in the parish of Dulce Nombre. Over 250 young people are taking classes by listening to the radio and studying work books during the week and coming into five centers in the parish to study on Saturday or Sunday. It’s one effort to make up for the deficiencies of the educational system here.

I could mention also questions of health and employment. But an issue that is critical these days is land. In northeast Honduras, in the Bajo Aguan region, there is much conflict over land. The causes are many, including a “Land Modernization” law in the 1990s that made it easier for large landholders to buy out the small landholders who had taken advantage of earlier land reform laws. Over 50 people have been killed in the Bajo Aguan region in the last few years. 

But land is a problem even here in southwest Honduras. I know many farmers who have to rent the land for their corn and bean crops. Some may have some land for coffee, a cash crop, but they have no land for the basics – corn and beans. Land is not cheap and many large landowners are reluctant to sell their land. And so I see large expanses of land used for cattle grazing while people lack land for subsistence crops.

This is another example of a structure of injustice.

Why write about his today, on the feast of the Finding of the Holy Cross?

In a book of Latin American martyrs I read regularly, today is the anniversary of the killing of Pablo Luna in 1985 in El Cerrón, Santa Bárbara, Honduras. Pablo accompanied people who were being threatened by a large landowner.

Today is also the anniversary of the killing of Felipe Huete and four others were killed in El Astillero, Atlantida, where they were occupying land. I wrote about it last year and you can read more here.

The history of deaths of people seeking land to work is a sad history here in Honduras and Latin America.

I think of them today as I contemplate the suffering Lord on the Cross.

Christ, the crucified campesino