Women missionary martyrs and other witnesses

I have read in reports on the Synod of the Amazon that there are many women, especially women religious, who have a major role in evangelization and the life of the church in the region. To adapt an image, women hold up at least half the church.

Today, looking at my calendar of witnesses, I noted that on this date five religious women were martyred.

On October 23, 1992, Sisters Kathleen McGuire, Shirley Kolmer, and Agnes Mueller, U.S. missionaries in Liberia, Sisters Adorers of the Precious Blood of Christ, were killed in the Gardnerville section of Monrovia, Liberia. Three days before, two other members of their congregation were killed, Sisters Barbara Ann Muttra and Mary Joel Kolmer. Despite the violence, they had decided to stay with their people. This struck home for me when I first heard of the valiant presence of these women since the two Kolmer cousins had a relative in the parish where I was serving.

On October 23, 1994, Sisters Esther Paniagua and Caridad María Alvarez, Spanish Augustinian Missionaries, were killed in the Bab-el-Ued section of Algiers, Algeria. They were beatified last year with other martyrs of Algeria, including the more famous Trappist monks of Tibhurine.

They are just a few of many women missionary martyrs including Sister Dorothy Stang, martyred in the Amazon on February 12, 2005, who show us the powerful love and mercy of God. There are also the four women martyred in El Salvador in December, 1980; Maryknoll Sisters Maura Clarke and Ita Ford, Ursuline sister Dorothy Kazel, and lay missionary Jean Donovan. 

Another less known woman, Annalena Tonelli, an Italian lay missionary in Kenya and Somalia, was killed in Somalia on October 5, 2003. She worked for those at the margins, “the poor, the suffering, the abandoned, the unloved,” working with those suffering from tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS, working against Female genital mutilation, as well as advocating for Somali refugees in Kenya (for which she was expelled from Kenya). She was killed in the hospital where she served the poor and marginalized.

These and many women left their homes and stayed, even when violence surrounded them. Though many were not martyred, they gave their lives in ways that continue to astound me.

I am blessed to have met and worked with some of them. While researching the role of the church in Suchitoto, El Salvador, I heard one Salvadoran women speak of the witness of five US sisters in her area who visited their communities in a war zone. "They came and took away our fear."

Such is the witness of women in the missions and in our world. They remind us, in the words of Annalena Tonelli:

“[Those] who count for nothing in the eyes of the world, but so much in the eyes of God . . . have need of us, and we must be with them and for them, and it doesn’t matter at all if our action is like a drop of water in the ocean. Jesus Christ did not speak about results. He only spoke about loving each other, about washing each other’s feet, of forgiving each other always.”

A 1992 photo of four of the sisters who worked in Suchitoto, before the San Salvador cathedral,
in a celebration of the ceasefire that ended the Salvadoran civil war.

Celebrating Dulce Nombre ... and more

Today, our parish celebrated its feast day, the Sweet Name of Mary – or, for more Anglo-Saxon sensitivities, the Holy Name of Mary.

Here celebrations of feast days of parishes, as well of patron saints of villages, are often preceded by nine days of prayers, a novena. Here different communities came to the main church to pray the rosary, followed by Mass.

Today, the celebration began with songs and fireworks at dawn. I slept in and stayed at home in Plan Grande and so didn’t participate, as I have in some precious years.

Before the Mass we had a procession, with a prominent place for the image of Mary from the Church.

People came from different villages in the parish, several with their images. I drove my car with bags of water for the people and so I had little chance to take photos. But I did take too of a new ritual. In the past a teacher from Dulce Nombre was responsible for the fireworks during the procession, but he is seriously ill. So one of the altar servers took over the responsibility. I guess there is a new ministry for acolytes: shooting off fireworks!

This was followed by a Mass in which six children from Dulce Nombre were baptized. Padre German asked me to baptize them. For me this is always a privilege, bringing new members into the Body of Christ. There were a few fidgety and crying kids, when I poured the baptismal waters over their heads.

Two weeks ago, we had confirmations int he parish. The bishop came and confirmed about 180 mostly young people in three places in our parish. Since I was responsible for coordinating the liturgies as well as serving as deacon at the Masses, I didn't take many photos. But here' are two from the Mass in Dulce Nombre. The first is of the bishop speaking to those who were to be confirmed.

The other is, if I may say so, awesome. As our pastor spoke to the confirmed after communion, I captured a moment when the sun came through the church door and was reflected on the new floor int he sanctuary. 

The past weeks have been hard on me. I’ve had two major repairs on the car – the axle casing (camisa) and one of the axle shafts (flecha), as well as the motor for one of the windows. 

I also had some continuing dental work (due to not going to the dentist for a few years). But the worst was serious stomach problems – including vomiting, acid reflux, and hiccups that had me worried one night. The next day I went to a private clinic and am recovering. Thanks be to God – and modern medicine.

One day last week two young priests came and we worked on the material for base communities for next year. This is the fourth year we’ve worked together. They are a delight to work with, though I think in a few things they defer to me (and suffer my poor Spanish.) This year I didn’t make lentil soup as I have other years. They had rice, broccoli, with gado gado sauce. (Gado gado is an Indonesian sauce with a peanut base, that I love. Though I often make my own recipe, this time I used a prepared block that an Indonesian friend who works at Villanova university gave me when I visited the east coast in March.)

This past Monday I had a training session for twenty-eight new catechists, mostly young people. They were good to work with and I hope they’ll persevere since many of the villages need more catechists and we need to welcome new young people into this ministry.

Last week I had two pre-marriage interviews back to back. The pastor does the initial interview; the couples receive their pre-marriage talks in their villages; I just do the interview with the couple and their witnesses – to try to avoid any problems. I am very happy that  we are experiencing more young people seeking marriage – some of them before living together!

I also had a funeral last Sunday. I had planned to visit the village of Agua Buena Dolores for a Sunday Celebration of the Word with Communion. I got a call Saturday evening telling me that a member of the community would be buried and so the celebration might be delayed. I mentioned that I’d be willing to do the funeral rites at the celebration early. At about 7 am on Sunday I got a call asking me to come as soon as possible to do the celebration and funeral rites. No problem.

For me, it seems rather strange that we sometimes have funerals on Sunday. But here there is almost no embalming and so the bodies have to be buried within 24 or 36 hours. But, in one sense, it makes sense that we have a funeral on a Sunday when needed, remembering that we are remembering the sharing of the deceased in the death and resurrection of the Lord and praying for the acceptance of the deceased in the Kingdom.

I was moved, as I often am at funerals, and make a special effort to connect with the family members – often just mentioning their names in the celebration. This time the challenge was to integrate some remarks on the passing of the deceased in the homily. I think it worked.

Next week we have a meeting of the social ministry. This time the director of the diocesan office of Caritas will be with us. We will also do some follow-up on our concerns about water and deforestation. Our idea is to do a major reforestation campaign for the first two weeks of October (connecting this with the feast of Saint Francis of Assisi on October 4). Some have told me that they have gotten saplings from various governmental bodies and are planning events. We’ll see how this goes. Another concern is the contamination of water. There are two major problems. The first is the water sources, usually springs. They often need to be protected and the reforestation will help this. The other problem is the contamination of streams by the run-off from the initial stages of the coffee production process. The de-pulped beans are soaked in water, but sometimes this water (called aguas mieles) flows into the streams. Some groups said they were going to evaluate the situation, talk with mayors, and try to generate projects to lessen the contamination.

Speaking of coffee production and contamination. Coffee has been sent to the US from the coffee association in El Zapote Santa Rosa. But I found out that, with the help of several international aid groups, they are finding ways to decrease the use of chemicals in production as well as to utilize the pulp and the aguas mieles for fertilizer.

The church in Dulce Nombre is being renovated. It needed to be painted but in the process of removing the stucco, we discovered that the two towers have some beautiful hand-hewn stones. The idea is to preserve them and treat them so that they can be seen – partly because these stones were gathered and hewn by members of Dulce Nombre fifty years ago.

We are also renovating the interior of the church, removing a large retablo and simplifying the sanctuary. I had an idea that I shared with the pastor to have a mural painted on the apse. Next week we will be speaking to a prospective artist.

One big event coming up, that I’ll write about later, is our sending of missionaries to another parish in October. For the last few years, parishioners have gone on mission to different communities in the parish, but this will be different. We’ve had some trainings and we’ll have another next week.

There is much more to write about – especially in terms of the continuing poverty and challenges that our people face, in the light of massive corruption, possible links between political leaders and drug trafficking, and incompetence in judicial affairs and in the infrastructure. Just a few days ago a major portion of the international highway between Santa Rosa de Copán and Cucuyagua caved in. That means that travel between the Guatemalan and Salvadoran borders and the major city of San Pedro Sula and the Caribbean port of Puerto Cortez was stopped and is greatly restricted, or had to be diverted through Guatemala.

More on this later. 

But, for now, a few more images of what I experience.

The kids at the school in Plan Grande celebrated the Day of the Child with a carrera de cintas.

The morning often brings incredible vistas:

And the flowers in the garden continue to amaze me, like this hibiscus:

Rethinking Mission - in Honduras

Today our parish, Dulce Nombre de María in Dulce Nombre de Copán, Honduras, sent out forty-one members of the parish on a week-long mission, most going out two-by-two, to visit almost all of the fifty-some towns, villages, and hamlets. They were sent at Mass this morning – without cellphones or money. Please pray for them.

I had to rethink “mission” when I came to Honduras I June 2007. I came as a “lay missionary” but quickly had this gently challenged. A Spanish Franciscan sister I had met told me about a Mass every Sunday morning in the neighborhood where I ended up living for more than eight years. A retired priest, now ninety years old and still going strong, presided at the Mass. The first time I went, Sor Inez introduced me as a lay missionary. Padre Fausto, without batting an eye, noted that we are all called to be missionaries. Wow.

Then I read and studied the document that had been issued in May 2007 by the Latin American bishops meeting in Aparecida, Brazil. Central to that document is the call to be missionary disciples. In the very first article they explain why they met and were sending out this message:

We have done so as pastors who want to continue to advance the evangelizing action of the Church, which is called to make all its members disciples and missionaries of Christ, Way, Truth, and Life, so our peoples may have life in Him.

Not surprisingly, the first major writing of Pope Francis echoed this, In paragraph 120 of Evangelii Gudium, The Joy of the Gospel, he wrote:

In virtue of their baptism, all the members of the People of God have become missionary disciples (cf. Mt 28:19).

                

This should be no surprise for those who realize that Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio was on the committee that produced the final document from the Aparecida meeting.

The week of mission that we have had in our parish for the last three years has been an attempt to live this out on the parish level.

For this mission, no outside preacher is brought in. All those involved are members of the parish who give a week of their time for this effort.

They go two by two (or, occasionally, in a group of three) to villages or towns which are far from their homes – living on the generosity of the village which provides them food, a place to sleep, and a guide to visit homes.

Their mission is not to preach. First of all, they are there to listen, to offer a word of comfort or invitation, to be the presence of God by what they do and say. In our training sessions, we have tried to help them develop a spirituality of mission similar to that found in the apostolic exhortations of Pope Francis, with an emphasis on accompanying the people. They are not there to preach at people.

Though we’ve stressed in the last years the importance of visiting the sick, this year we see the mission as reaching out to the estranged – in Spanish, los alejados – so that they can hear words of welcome from the Church.

The missionaries will visit the sick and the elderly, but we hope they will reach out to people estranged from the church or persons who are looked down upon by other members of their communities.

This year we gave each missionary a cross to wear around their neck. It was made locally by a carpenter, based on a cross that I had obtained in New York over a year ago, a cross meant to be held in the palm of the hand. The missionaries will wear this around their neck and when they pray with someone they will take off the cross and place it in the other person’s hand. They were urged to give it to someone on the last day.

As Padre German explained to the missionaries before Mass, the carpenter had made about 100 of them for us last year, at no cost. Each missionary had one and gave it to a sick or bed0ridden person during their week of mission. The carpenter just wanted to keep the original. When the pastor asked him to make some this year, the carpenter pulled that cross out of his pocket. He had carried it and often held it in his hands. It was nearly black, having absorbed the sweat, the oil, and more from his hands.

Bearing the cross, sharing the cross, letting one’s life be absorbed by the cross – that’s a new way of doing mission. Well, not really new – just returning to the roots.