God working among us

When things get rough and life leaves me feeling lonely, God has a way of stirring my heart.

Yesterday it was going to a distant village for a Celebration of the Word with Communion at 9 in the morning. The community has had some serious problems, including divisions. At the request of our pastor I spoke with one of the parties involved. What he said to me was the mirror image of what our pastor had told me of the experience of the other person. Both say that they are open to reconciliation but the other one isn’t. I advised the person I spoke with to speak directly with the other person or find a person whom the other respects to pass the message on that he is open to reconciliation. I don’t know if anything will come from this and I felt helpless, unable to resolve the situation then and there. But it is in the long process that reconciliation can happen. I hope and pray that I planted seeds that may sprout in the hearts of these two men.

After the Celebration I went and visited three places to bring communion to the sick and home bound. The first was in a very isolated place. There I found a beautiful couple. I spoke at length with the husband who was a delight. He and his wife were married in the church last year but have been together more than forty years. It was a grace to be able to share the Body of Christ with them.

Then I visited the house of one of the persons guiding me around the community. There I met her daughter who, I believe, is suffering from a severe trauma since one of her young children was murdered. She spoke of how she loved to play the guitar and sing, but I sensed a deep grief. Then we went to visit an older woman up the mountain, the grandmother of the woman. It was a short visit since I was going to a Mass at 2 o’clock in a village about 45 minutes away. I barely made it.

Today I had a meeting of persons involved in Social Ministry in the villages. We had about thirty participants. After some explanation of what social ministry is and can be, I shared some of the areas in which we might be working. It was an eye-opening experience as many shared what they were doing in their villages. I am amazed at some of their efforts.

In one village, I found out that the youth group was visiting the sick and collected corn and beans for poor families.

In another village, they have a group of ten who are working to respond to the needs of the sick and poor. They have organized a solidarity fund to help those in need. I have been trying to push this in the parish since last year and it is taking root in various parts of the parish.

I came away edified. So much being done, with so few resources, to meet so great needs. I ended up sharing with them the thoughts of Dorothy Day from Loaves and Fishes:

People say, "What good can one person do? What is the sense of our small effort?" They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time. We can be responsible only for the one action of the present moment. But we can beg for an increase of love in our hearts that will vitalize and transform all our individual actions, and know that God will take them and multiply them, as Jesus multiplied the loaves and the fishes.

Tomorrow seven or eight communion ministers will go with me to San Agustín to visit the sick and homebound. There is only one communion minister year and she has been ill. So we are going to meet together for prayer and then go out to visit eighteen to twenty persons there and in a neighboring village.

These experiences give me life – and are real gifts from God.

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.