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.

Preaching forgiveness in the midst of violence and impunity

This morning I went to preside at a Celebration of the Word with Communion in a community that has suffered violence – and impunity.

A few years ago, one young man was arrested and two young men were killed by the police. The young man is still in prison and I think there has been no trial for the policeman who killed the two young men.

A little later, a jilted lover came and killed the woman and her two kids by locking them in a room and setting it on fire. They survived briefly but died. He is in prison.

A bit later, a couple related to people in this village and to one of those imprisoned was killed in their home in a machete attack in a different village.

How do you preach in a place touched by violence and injustice when the readings are about forgiveness? Here are some notes on what I shared.

I started by expressing my trepidation of preaching on forgiveness in the face of the sufferings of the people.

I asked them to remember, above all, that our God is compassionate and merciful, as we prayed in the responsorial, psalm 103.

First, I tried to explain that forgiveness doesn’t mean forgetting or ignoring. In many societies, we try to ignore offenses and so never face them. Ignoring or claiming to forget an offense really leaves no place for real forgiveness.

Ignoring or forgetting an offense, a crime, can lead to the impunity that surrounds us here in Honduras – where the poor suffer and no one is held responsible.

But, real forgiveness can lead to reconciliation, to finding a way to live in peace with others. It is above all a way to leave the offended and the offender free to grow, to change.

The person who suffered can leave aside feelings of anger, revenge, resentment. These often tear at the heart of those who are offended, like a parasite depriving the person offended of peace, of the possibility of new life and growth. This pain, unattended to, can eat us up - from the inside. It can also lead, when resentment is allowed to fester, to feuds between persons, to fights, and even to deaths. When there is no justice, many take “justice” into their own hands – resulting in a cycle of pain and violence.

But forgiveness is liberating.

It can leave the offender free to change, to ask forgiveness, to make amends, to begin anew.

Forgiveness leaves a space for reconciliation and even solidarity between the person offended and the offender.

To help them think and pray about all this, I shared two stories. 

I spoke of a man whose little boy had been violated. He brought a complaint against the perpetrator to the justice system. The man was arrested. Some condemned him for doing this: “You are a delegate of the Word and have to forgive.” I told him that what he had done was good, especially since it cam out later that the man who violated other children and so he was preventing future harm. But, as I saw it, the delegate brought the charges without anger, without a desire for vengeance.

The other is the story of a Spanish missionary priest in Chile, Joan Alinsa, who was killed on September 19, 1973. (I wrote about him in a blog post three years ago.)The soldiers came and sought him out in the hospital where he worked. They were going to blindfold him before shooting him; but he told them “Please don’t blindfold me, kill me face to face, because I want to see you to forgive you.”

These are contrasting examples of how to deal with the call to forgive.

I closed emphasizing that our God is merciful and compassionate, but also noting that in the Lord’s prayer, which were about to pray before Communion, we ask our Father to “forgive us our offenses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

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We experience forgiveness from God, every day. We are called to forgive every day, especially in the little details of life. And thus God will forgive us even more.

And so I prayed that the forgiveness that leads to reconciliation will help regenerate this and all other places beset by violence, death, and injustice. 

Christmas and the poor Christ

Yesterday after lunch with the bishop (after he had confirmed about 235 people in three locations), I mentioned to my pastor that I would be coming to the 11 pm “Midnight” Mass today in the town of Concepción. He asked me to preach.

I am going tomorrow for a 9:00 am Liturgy of the Word with Communion in the aldea of San Isidro La Cueva and will be preaching there, but this will be something quite different, but in both places I will be preaching of the birth of our Savior in the midst of the poor.

A few days ago, I read these words of Saint Clare in her first letter to Saint Agnes of Prague:

If so great and good a Lord, then, on coming into the Virgin’s womb, chose to appear despised, needy and poor in this world, so that people who were in utter poverty, want and absolute need of heavenly nourishment might become rich in Him, possessing the kingdom of heaven, be very joyful and glad. Be filled with a remarkable happiness and a spiritual joy! 

Saint Clare is, in part, reflecting the words of Saint Paul (2 Corinthians 8: 9):

For you know the grace of our Lord, Christ Jesus: he was rich, but for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.

At Christmas we worship a God become poor.

Another insight came to me last night. Before going to bed last night, while reading a few chapters of Goodness and Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas, published last year by Orbis Books, I came across a marvelous sermon of Hans Urs von Balthazar, “Into the Darkness with God.” (I highly recommend the book and the sermon.)

What struck me was this quote, which I didn’t expect from this theologian:

It is, therefore, in order that he shall find God, the Christian is placed in the streets of the world, sent to the manacled and poor brethren, to all who suffer, hunger, and thirst to all who are naked, sick, and in prison. From henceforth this is his place; he must identify with them all. This is the great joy that is proclaimed to him today, for it is the same way that God sent a Savior to us. We ourselves may be poor and in bondage, too, in need of liberation; yet at the same time all of us who have been given a share in the joy of deliverance are sent to be the companions of those who are poor and in bondage.

As this poor Christ came to accompany us, so we too are called to accompany the poor.

All this brings me back to one of my favorite Christmas quotes, from the December 24, 1978, homily of Blessed Monseñor Oscar Romero:

No one can celebrate a genuine Christmas without being truly poor. The self sufficient, the proud, those who, because they have everything, look down on others, those who have no need of God — for them there will be no Christmas. Only the poor, the hungry, those who need someone to come on their behalf, will have that someone. That someone is God, Emmanuel, God-with-us. Without poverty of spirit there can be no abundance of God.

We are called to become poor, to be humble, to bow before the Lord made flesh, made poor, in our midst and to bow in loving service and accompaniment of those who are poor around us – not merely helping them, but befriending them, and walking with them in the light of the Kingdom of our God, made flesh.

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This photo was taken on December 5, 2004, at the entrance to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. To enter and reverence God become human, most of us must bow down. But it may have been constructed this way so that war horses couldn't enter the church. To enter and adore the Lord made flesh, we must leave behind all our weapons, all our weapons, entering disarmed and poor. 

Ten days a deacon

On Friday, July 15, I was ordained a permanent deacon for the diocese of Santa Rosa de Copán, a diocese where I worked as a lay missionary since June 2007.

Now ordained, I feel more a member of this place and much less a missionary from without. In fact, I am now a member of the clergy of this diocese. My ministerial identity is as a deacon here – no longer as a missionary from outside.

But in some ways there is not a lot different in what I’m doing, especially since I’ve been living in a village in the parish of Dulce Nombre. I’m still preparing for training sessions for catechists; I’m still connecting with the youth leaders of youth groups and base communities; I’m still taking part in the parish council; I’m still bringing communion to the sick and occasionally to communities without extraordinary ministers of Communion.

But in many ways life has changed.

At Masses, I proclaim the Gospel, the Good News that sustains me and that offers hope to our people.

I have preached twice – last Sunday at the Mass of Thanksgiving and today at Mass in Concepción.

When I go visit the sick, I bring them Communion as I have before, but before leaving them I can bless them, in the name of the Church, with the Sign of the Cross. I am not blessing them from myself; but the blessing I can share is the blessing of God through the whole People of God gathered with the sick.

There is something about blessing people with the sign of the cross that I need to reflect on more.

People here are big on blessings. Often when a person encounters a god-parent, he or she will join the hands together and often bow before the god-parent who often places the god-child’s hands between his or her hands. The first time I saw this it struck me as a great sign of blessing and the importance of the relation between god-child and god-parent. What is especially fascinating is that the god-children are not only kids; I have often seen adults seek their god-parents’ blessings.

In light of this, blessing a person with the Sign of the Cross becomes for me an action that the community does, through me, blessing persons.

Toward I found this particularly poignant as I visited three ill people in their homes in Vertientes, after a Celebration of the Word with Communion with members of the community. In many ways, I felt blessed to be able to share God’s blessings with these elderly and ill persons in their poor houses.

But the big event was yesterday in Quebraditas. Even though Padre German presided at the Mass (the second of three he’d celebrated Saturday), he asked me to baptize the babies and little children at the Mass – all twenty of them. It was a new experience – squirming and screaming babies and proud parents and god-parents.

Again, it was a blessing to share God’s love with them through this sacrament.

This week promises some new experiences – including assisting at a Mass with First Communions.

But there was one other experience that stirred my heart.

The evening after my ordination, I arrived home and after talking with Phil who was visiting from St. Thomas Aquinas in Ames, I went up to pray.

For many years I have prayed parts of the Liturgy of Hours. I have tried every morning to pray Vigils from Benedictine Daily Prayer, followed by Morning Prayer in Spanish. I have tried to pray Evening Prayer in Spanish and at least parts of Night Prayer in English (accompanied by an Ignatian Examen.)

Now I have become more focused in praying these because at my ordination I promised to celebrate the Liturgy of the Hours “in the name of the Church and, even more so, in the name of the whole community.” (The English translation speaks of celebrating for the Church and the whole world.)

That first evening as I prayed the psalms I had a sense that I was not just praying for the Church and the world but in the name of the Church and the whole community,

The psalms were not only my prayer; they are the prayer of the People of God and of all God’s people in the world. Though I may not be experiencing the joy or the desperation of a particular psalm, there are people in the church and the world who are filled with joy, or suffering from anxiety and despair. When I am praying, I am praying with them, offering their joys and sighs to God.

Praying the Liturgy of the Hours thus becomes for me not only a way to praise God with the Church and the world; it is a way of being in solidarity with all God’s people; it is a way to accompany them in the presence of God – even accompanying those who do not know God or reject God.

So what is new about these ten days as a deacon?

I have a sense of the presence of God’s grace surrounding me and sustaining me.

I have a sense of being more connected with God’s people especially the sick and the poor.

I have a renewed sense of mission, of calling to accompany even more the poor.

I am challenged and encouraged by these words of Blessed Charles de Foucauld, the universal Little Brother:

Jesus came to Nazareth, the place of the hidden life, of ordinary life, of family life, of prayer, work, obscurity, silent virtues, practiced with no witnesses other than God, his friends and neighbors. Nazareth, the place where most people lead their lives. We must infinitely respect the least of our brothers… let us mingle with them. Let us be one of them to the extent that God wishes… and treat them fraternally in order to have the honor and joy of being accepted as one of them.

That is what I pray that I may continue to learn.