Busy but blessed

This will be a busy week and October will be pretty much the same. In the details of life, God works and calls us to seek holiness.

And in the glory of creation, God is present, even if some people continue burning the fields.

This Sunday morning I had a friend visiting and so I only went to the afternoon Mass in San Agustín. But the next three Sundays I’ll go back to the practice of going to a village for a Celebration of the Word with Communion.

This coming Wednesday and Friday, the parish will host the bishop in four parts of the parish for the confirmation of more than 220 young people, together with some older people who have never been confirmed. Some were baptized in the Easter Vigil; others have been preparing since April.

Last Monday we had a reconciliation service for the confirmation candidates and their sponsors. I think there were more than 600 people and, even with nine priests, the confessions went from 9 am to noon. After this, we had Mass with first communion for almost 100 of those who will be confirmed. We ran out of consecrated hosts, even though we had three ciboriums filled!

This Thursday, the bishop will also be in the parish for the institution of fifteen new extraordinary ministers of Communion. They have been in formation for about two and a half years. As I have mentioned earlier, their major ministry is visiting the sick.

Next month, September 23 to 30, we will have a week of mission in the parish. Members of the parish will visit other villages in two, visiting the sick and others. In the past, this has helped bring some back to the practice of their faith and even has opened the way for various sacramental marriages.

This past Tuesday, I led a day of formation for the missionaries, using Pope Francis’s recent apostolic exhortation on holiness. Padre German was going to lead it and I was going to do a part, but he had to go to San Pedro that day and so I did it all (even though he asked me to do this with just a few hours notice. 

This past Wednesday, Padre Fausto Milla, who is a young ninety years old, celebrated his ordination on August 22, 1968, by Pope Paul VI, in Medellín, Colombia. (My translation of an article on his life can be found here.)

Padre Fausto is, and has been, a priest committed to the poor and to justice. He was instrumental in publicizing the Rio Sumpul massacre in 1980, something he mentioned in his remarks.

I have known him since my first month here in Honduras in 2007. When I lived in Santa Rosa I often went to his Sunday morning Masses in the chapel of San Martín de Porres. It was for me an honor to serve as deacon at this Mass.

This coming week the community of San Agustín celebrates their feast day. They will celebrate tomorrow with a Mass in honor of Saint Monica, Saint Augustine’s mother. I hope to be there for their Mass on Tuesday afternoon, even though I have a meeting with the diocesan social ministry committee. I will try to leave there early enough to arrive on time.

The week after next we begin the novena to prepare for the celebration of the parish feast day on September 12. I’ll have some responsibilities on the day of the feast.

I’ll have a meeting with the communion ministers in September as well as one with youth leaders. I’ll be doing at least one pre-marriage interview and today I was asked to preside at a quinceañera in late September.

I will probably be involved in the parish mission in some way, though there is a chance that I will go to El Salvador that week for a few days. Six persons who lived in the canton of Haciendita II, Suchitoto, where I lived in 1992, were killed in a car accident. The forty-day Mass should be during the mission week. I wanted to go for the last night of the novenario but it would have been difficult to fit into the schedule. But I do want to spend some time with the canton.

So life goes on. Even though there are scandals in the church in the US and even here in Honduras, God works among the poor and outcast. My ministry is to be present to serve them. For that I am grateful to God.

Rio Sumpul Massacre

Several major corrections have been made to this article. I had the wrong date for the Sumpul River massacre. I also confused the Sumpul River massacre with the Lempa River massacre on March 17, 1981. 

Thirty-five years ago, on May 14, 1980, hundreds of Salvadorans fleeing the Salvadoran army tried to cross the Sumpul River to seek safety in Honduras. But they found themselves being fired on by the Salvadoran military as well as the Honduran military.

Many died, victims of the military – shot or drowned. There was also another massacre of fleeing Salvadorans on March 17, 1981, at the Lempa River.

There were, however, any number of heroes in the face of the Lempa River massacre – including the Hondurans who welcomes them. But two US people of faith – Father Beto (Earl) Gallagher, O.F.M. Cap., and Yvonne Dilling  rescued many people, swimming in the waters, evading the fire coming from both sides of the river.

A hero, of the Sumpul River massacre, was Padre Fausto Milla, a Honduran priest, who refused to be silenced and passed the word on to the world, despite the denials of the governments.

Many perished; others survived, traumatized; some went to refugee camps in Honduras and then returned to El Salvador in the late 1980s and early 1990s. They are also heroes, people who refused to give in to oppressive governments, to violent repression, and to threats.

Padre Beto

But today I think of Padre Beto whom I never met but whose stories I have heard from many Hondurans, stories of a man of faith who loved the people and risked his life for them

I think of Yvonne Dilling whose book, In Search of Refuge, I read many years ago.

And I think of Padre Fausto, whose Masses I often attended when I lived in Santa Rosa and who is still a voice for justice and liberation.

They are a few of the great cloud of witnesses who show us what the Reign of God might be.

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I have written many times in this blog about Padre Fausto. A translation of an article on his life can be found here.

I wrote a bit about Padre Beto at the end of this blog entry.

Here are two articles on the massacre – in the New York Times and in this blog entry.

Here is a short video on the Sumpul River massacre: