Celebrating the Virgin of Carmen in Debajiados

When I learned that I would be ordained a deacon on Friday, July 15, I was very happy that this would occur on the feast of the great Franciscan, Saint Bonaventure. A return to my Franciscan roots.

The parish of Dulce Nombre de María, where I have helped since October 2007, had decided to celebrate a Mass of Thanksgiving on Sunday, July 16.

That left July 16 without anything planned.

But July 16 is a special day here, the feast of our Lady of Mount Carmel, a feast special for the devotees of the brown scapular.

There are three places in the parish which have a church dedicated to La Virgen de Carmen. My one wish was to first exercise my diaconia during Mass in Debajiados, one of the poorest and most remote villages in the parish. I have been there at least four times before, including one Ash Wednesday and Good Friday in 2013 and this year.

Phil Barutha, a visitor from the parish of St. Thomas Aquinas in Ames, came on his own to accompany my ordination and he is going around with me in my ministry.

He and I got to Debajiados a little before 10 o’clock when Mass was scheduled and so we had time to walk around and talk with people. A group had come for Mass from a nearby village. They belonged to another parish and had not had a visit from a priest for 18 years. (That may be soon changed.) One of the young women wanted a photo with Phil and me – for the social media!

Padre German finally arrived and he proceeded to hear confessions. So Mass didn’t start until after 11:00.  An auspicious beginning to my first full Mass functioning as a deacon.

I proclaimed the Gospel for the first time, aware of the privilege. 

I distributed communion (and we almost ran out of consecrated hosts!) 

After Mass we had a tasty squash seed soup in the best house in the village.

When I arrived, I asked Juan Ángel, who is preparing to become a Communion minister, if his parents would be at Mass. He told me that they are still sick and so I offered to take them communion. So, after eating, Phil and I headed out with Juan Ángel and other folks.

The last time I had made this trip I went on horseback. This time I drove about a third of the way and then we walked – more than half an hour, mostly up hill.

Sweating a bit, we reached the house of his parents, Juan Antonio and Reina. I entered, we talked, and then we prayed and I gave them Communion. Juan has trouble with inflammation and his wife is still suffering after an operation for uterine cancer almost two years ago. The pain was evident on her face. But, as we talked, they shared their deep faith in God, in the midst of suffering.

Before I left I concluded our prayer with a blessing.

Preparing for the visit I had looked at a book on pastoral care of the sick, noting a short ritual for bringing  Communion to the sick. I realized that I as a deacon could bless them.

I reflected that, when I give a blessing as a deacon, I am not giving them my blessing. I am a channel for the blessing of God through the entire People of God. The blessing is from the whole Church – not from an individual. (That merits another blog post.)

I pray that the blessing of the Church that I shared with them helps them live with more consolation and courage than before.

We walked back – a beautiful landscape, though in the midst of poverty.

Juan Ángel then gave me a sack of beans and we gave him and a son a ride up the hill and down the hill (about 30 minutes) to a nearby town.

Juan Ángel and his son Ever, with Phil

Juan Ángel and his parents were blessings for me. They help me see what I am called to as a deacon – to accompany the poor and suffering, to bring Jesus in Communion to them, and to share what I have with others – as a poor man shared with me.

This was a great way to celebrate my first full day as a deacon – learning to serve God and the poor, among the poor.

Which Romero?

Don’t call me a saint;

I don’t want to be dismissed so easily.

Dorothy Day

In February, shortly after Pope Francis authorized the beatification of Archbishop Romero, the Catholic News Agency presented an interview with Monsignor Jesús Delgado, who knew Romero and wrote a semi-official biography. In part it read:

Archbishop Romero “knew nothing about Liberation Theology, he did not want to know about it. He adhered faithfully to the Catholic Church and to above all to the teachings of the Popes.”

His theology was focused on the presence of God among the poor, “which we could describe like this: ‘God present and living with the poor and walking with the poor’,” Msgr. Delgado said.

I will leave an examination of this charge to others. Michael Lee has an article on this in an upcoming book from Orbis Books, but it is available here in Spanish.

When I read this I felt that Dorothy Day’s warning was coming true. Blessed Oscar would be sanitized, a sort of "Romero Lite." He would be invoked in prayer; his relics would be venerated; candles would be lit in his honor. But his radical message of a church that lives out the resurrection of a poor Christ would be pushed to the sidelines.

Would these words of his November 13, 1977, homily be ever heard?

Do you want to know if your Christianity is genuine?

Here is the touchstone:

Whom do you get along with?

Who are those who criticize you?

Who are those who do not accept you?

Who are those who flatter you?

Know from that what Christ said once:

“I have come not to bring peace, but division.”

There will be division even in the same family,

because some want to live more comfortably

by the world’s principles,

those of power and money.

But others have embraced the call of Christ

and must reject all that cannot be just in the world.

This concerned me. 

When I heard of all the preparations for the event I wondered if the church would present a homogenized Romero.

The tension between a Romero who is "acceptable" to all and a Romero who is really Good News to the poor was present in the two days of celebration I attended. But I believe that the Romero of the poor rose up in the voices and hearts of the poor and those in solidarity with them.

The Vigil presented, for the most part, a Romero who was truly in solidarity with the poor.  It reflected his vision of Jesus:

“Christ appeared…with the signs of liberation: shaking off oppressive yokes, bringing joy to hearts, sowing hope. And this is what God is doing now in history.”

Even though a prominent cardinal praised Romero and his commitment to the poor, he referred to both Romero and his successor Monsenõr Rivera y Damas as “prudent.” 

This was in contrast to the chant later that evening, led by a prominent Jesuit that invoked Romero as courageous:

Romero valiente contigo está tu gente.Courageous Romero,your people is with you.

Yet almost all the hymns of the Mass were from the Salvadoran and Nicaraguan campesino Masses. The opening hymn was from the Nicaraguan Mass: Vos sos el Dios de los pobres: You are the God of the poor.

The hymn places Jesus in the daily lives of the people, He is invoked as a worker, who sweats and struggles with the people. Jesus’ identification with the poor is complete:

I have seen you in the corner store,… selling lottery tickets, checking car tires in a gas station…with leather gloves and overalls.

The hymns and songs of the evening celebrated a Christ and a Romero – as well as the martyrs of El Salvador and Guatemala –risking their lives for the poor.

The Mass of beatification was a little more subdued, but not as traditionalist as some had feared.

Before the Mass there were presentations on Romero as pastor, prophet, and martyr.  These were fairly good and included a sense of Romero’s commitment to the poor.

The Mass began, surprisingly, with the opening song of the Salvador Popular Mass, Vamos todos al banquete.

We are all going to the banquet

to the table of Creation;

everybody on a stool

with a place and a mission.

I get up very early:

the Community is waiting for me.

I go up to the Cathedral with joy,

searching for friendship.

God invites all the poor

to the common table of faith,

where there are no hoarders

and all have more than tortillas.

But the third verse was omitted:

God commands us to make of this world
a table where there is equality,
working and struggling together,
sharing our property.

That would be too much for some – especially some dignitaries and government officials.

Cardinal Ángelo Amato who came in the name of the Pope spoke strongly of Romero’s witness and mentioned the witness of other American saints. He also noted “Heaven ought to begin here [on earth].”

Yet the Romero of the poor was especially present in the many poor who remembered him and whom he defended and loved. And for many the rainbow ring around the sun, that came at the almost the exact moment when Romero’s image was unveiled, as a sign that the heavens also rejoiced at this remembrance of one who loved the poor.

Today at Mass in Suchitoto I saw a woman I’ve known since I was here in 1992. She experienced the repression of the 1970s, the war of the early 1980s, and lives in one of the first repopulated communities here. I asked her if she ever met Romero. She told me that he came for the parish feast day and stood at the door greeting people as he left. She had shaken his hand.

She then recalled how a relative had a large scratch on her chin. Romero gently touched it and asked how she was.

The poor remember Romero’s gentle love for the poor, his strong advocacy of the repressed, his love of the poor Christ.

That Romero was present.

May his memory renew the Church, the nations of Central America, and ourselves so that we may begin to witness to the Reign of God, a Reign of justice, love, and peace.

Deacons and charity

Saint Lawrence is one of the most well-known deacon saints.

Lawrence was one of the seven deacons of Rome while Sixtus was the bishop. When Pope Sixtus was martyred with six other deacons on August 7, 258, Lawrence was spared.

When St. Sixtus was being led away, Lawrence is reputed to have said: "I was your minister when you consecrated the blood of Our Lord; why do you leave me behind now that you are about to shed your own?"

The prefect of Rome knew that Lawrence was in charge of the goods of the church and demanded he hand them over.

Lawrence, according to some accounts, distributed all the church’s good to the poor and then showed up with the poor and the ill, telling the prefect: “These are the treasures of the church.”

Early deacons were involved with the administration of the diocese and thus with care of the poor. Thus, even today, the “service of charity” is central to the ministry of deacons – or at least it should be.

The centrality of charity follows from the deacon’s call to be a servant. As the Vatican’s document on “Basic Norms for the Formation of the Permanent Deacon” puts it (¶ 72):

The element which most characterizes diaconal spirituality is the discovery of and sharing in the love of Christ the servant, who came not to be served but to serve. The candidate must therefore be helped progressively to acquire those attitudes which are specifically diaconal, though not exclusively so, such as simplicity of heart, total giving of self and disinterest for self, humble and helpful love for the brothers and sisters, especially the poorest, the suffering and the most needy, the choice of a lifestyle of sharing and poverty...

Cardinal Walter Kasper put it much more directly:

 The basic spiritual attitude of the deacon… must include a perceptive eye for those suffering distress, illness or fear. The task is to bring a healing that sets them free and empowers them to trust and so to serve and love others.

The service of charity has been, at least theoretically, at the centre of most of my life. At times I have had to be coaxed to actually serve the poor – rather than just talk about it. 

This happened especially at St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Ames where I was challenged to serve the poor directly – partly by meeting with those who came to the church for financial assistance, partly by serving meals at the local shelter.

There I also learned that I cannot do it all by myself and so we established a number of ways for both resident and student parishioners to interview those who came for help and to serve those in need at a local shelter and with other groups that served the poor.

I owe a lot to the women who helped set up St. Thomas’ Love Your neighbor ministry as well as to the university students who formed the Student Justice and Service team and enabled hundreds of students to respond to the needs of the poor. There were also those who challenged me with other ways to serve the poor. It is a great blessing to hear that these ministries continue at St. Thomas.

Those who help start these ministries and continue to serve the poor are my teachers of charity. They are the ones who really have served the poor. They know who they are.

They are my inspiration as I go forward to becoming a candidate for the permanent diaconate.

I am who I am in part because of them.

I thank God for them and pray that I may be worthy of their example.

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Image by Ade Bethune.

Service at the altar and the table of the poor

...service of the poor is the logical consequence 

of service of the altar. 

Basic Norms for the Formation of Permanent Deacons,  73

For several decades ago, I have connected worship with service to the poor and the pursuit of justice. Perhaps it was in the early 1960s when I attended a meeting of the Liturgical Conference. Several speakers connected the liturgy with care for the poor.

Dorothy Day is perhaps the greatest example of a person who tried to live this in her life. The Catholic Worker houses included feeding the poor and worshipping the Lord. I saw here several times – once at Mass in Rosary parish in the Lower East side and once at a Friday night clarification of thought at the Catholic Worker around the corner. She was at home in both places.

Some of her inspiration came from the Benedictine monk Father Virgil Michel, a pioneer of the liturgical movement in the US, who saw the relation of the altar and the world. In the February 1940 issue of Orate Fratres, he wrote:

What the early Christians thus did at the altar of God, in the central act of Christian worship, they also lived out in their daily lives. They understood fully that the common action of worship was to be the inspiration of all their actions. They knew well that their common giving of themselves to God and to the brethren of Christ was in fact a solemn promise made to God that they would live their lives in this same love of God and of God‘s children, their brethren in Christ, throughout all the day. Unless they did that, their action before God would be at best lip-service, a lie before God.

The deacon is meant to show sacramentally the connection. As Pope John Paul II said to deacons in the US in 1987:

...the word of God inevitably leads us to the Eucharistic worship of God at the altar; in turn, this worship leads us to a new way of living which expresses itself in acts of charity.  

Rev. Paul McPartlan makes this clear with a beautiful image:

The deacon stands at the altar and prepares the gifts with clean hands, but he stands also where the practical need is greatest, getting his hands very dirty. 

There should exist no gap between the altar and the world. Indeed, we bring ourselves and all the world to the table of the Lord – so that the bread and wine may be transformed in the Body and Blood of Christ and so that we may be transformed into the Body of Christ in a world that will be transformed by Christ.

As Bishop (now Cardinal) Walter Kasper said in a 1977 speech:

Through his ministry in liturgy, preaching and diaconia, [the deacon] has the chance make people aware of the link between faith and life. In his service at the altar he sets the needs of man on the table of the Eucharist; and of course he includes them in his preaching. He has to make the parishes sensitive to all situations, where need exists and to motivate them to work with each other and for each other.

As my friend Fr. Tim Shugrue has said and written, the deacon ought to make the needs of the poor made known in his homilies.

Some writers have suggested that the deacon ought to have the ear of the bishop so that he can share with him the needs of the poor and marginalized in the diocese. A bishop at the Council of Trent wrote that all the needs of the people are mediated to the bishop by deacons.

I don’t know if I have the courage to do this. But I do feel that God may be calling me to another step to serve those most in need by being a sign of the real connection between life and the table of the Lord. And then may the Lord give me the grace to listen to the poor and share their concerns with the People of God – including the bishop.

Maybe in this way, I can begin to help our parish live out the vision of the Entrance Hymn of the Salvadoran People’s Mass:

Vamos todos al banquete
a la mesa de la Creación,Cada cual con su taburetetiene un puesto y una misión. We are all going to the banquet
to the table of Creation.
All of us with our stools
have a place and a mission.

Timothy Shugrue, in an article in the collection Forming Deacons: Ministers of Soul and Leaven:

It would be a real contribution to the life of the community if, every time we heard a deacon, we came away with an insight into possibilities for responding to a need that his natural sensitivity, strengthened by the grace of orders, has helped us to recognize or feel with greater intensity and with the idea that some practical remedy is within our reach. 

I can't

Yesterday, for the second time in a week, I heard someone say, “I can’t.”

Yesterday, after the rite of election with the catechumens, a few catechists and I went with them to a meeting room on the church grounds.

I talked about the temptations of Jesus and mentioned how we are all tempted. We handed out small sheets of paper and I asked the newly elect to write or draw a temptation that young people experience. Later they would place them on the floor in the shape of a cross.

As I went through the crowd, encouraging them to write or draw, I came across a young man who wasn’t doing anything. He told me he couldn’t read or write. He was not the only young person there would couldn’t; I’d guess there were at least five of the eighty-one who were illiterate.

I urged him to draw something. “No puedo,” he told me. I can’t.

Instead of pushing the point, I told him just to put a line on the paper. I wish I had more time to encourage him to try, knowing that he would probably be able to draw something.

Such a sense of powerlessness grieves me deeply.

I talked with him as we left the meeting hall to get back to the church for the end of Mass. He works on his family’s farm – with corn and beans. They had coffee, but it was ruined by the roya fungus; they have planted some on their half a manzana; but that won’t provide a harvest for three years.

How can we accompany these young people who feel so powerless, who feel they cannot even draw – just because they cannot read or write?

How can we accompany these people who feel so powerless in the face of a fungus that destroys what is one of their few sources of cash?

How can we accompany these people who feel so much at the mercy of those who have wealth and power?

How can we help them find hope and realize that they can?