Message to St. Thomas from Dulce Nombre

This weekend, October 12-13, I spoke at the end of all the Masses at St. Thomas Aquinas in Ames, Iowa, bringing greetings from our parish of Dulce Nombre de María in Honduras. Here are the notes for my remarks.

My name is John Donaghy, Juancito to the people I work with in the Honduran parish of Dulce Nombre de María, the sister parish of St. Thomas.

I have been in Honduras since 2007 and was ordained a deacon in 2016. It is opportune that I am with you here in October, the extraordinary month of mission.

This Sunday fifty parishioners will be going on a week-long mission to another parish in the diocese, without money and without cell phone, which Is probably harder. I am on mission to you, but without the austerity of my fellow parishioners.

I bring you greetings from our parish and, like the Samaritan leper, I want to share our thanks for your continuing prayers and solidarity.

We live in the second poorest country in the Americas, with 68% poverty, and 44% extreme poverty – “a land beaten down by corruption, impunity, drug-trafficking, and intense poverty,” as our pastor, Padre German Navarro, writes.

The parish has a strong sense of mission – with more than forty rural villages, which our pastor, visits at least once every two months.

Much of the parish’s pastoral work is done by the people. Every weekend Padre German has at least five Masses, but the other communities have celebrations of the Word, led by delegates of the Word. Where these is a Communion minister they have Communion. There are 28 in the parish.

Several villages have youth groups, but almost all have religious education, led by catechists from their village. In August we celebrated almost 200 confirmations in three different locations in the parish.

Your generosity helps us subsidize the costs of forming these leaders.

The area is poor without easy access to education and decent health care. The partial scholarships provided for about 100 middle and high school students helps, but the needs are great. This year one initiative has been an English class for 19 grade school kids in the village where I live – with your help.

The pickup bought with your donation helps us provide lower cost transportation for medical patients and emergencies. A Kansas-city based project brings medical brigades twice a year (and I try to accompany them).

We have our share of other social ills – farmers who get little for their crops, corruption and misuse of funds, rising costs of living, clinics without medicine, heat and drought, deforestation and contamination of water sources, among others. The coffee project which STA helped start is growing stronger. (Drink more El Zapote coffee!)

In the parish our village-based social ministry seeks to respond, by visiting the sick, collecting aid for the sick, the poor, and medical emergencies. About sixteen villages also participated this past month in planting trees around the communities’ water sources.

There is much more to share with you in terms of the pastoral work of our parishioners, as well as their needs. STA has helped in some very generous ways to help our formation of leaders, as well as to respond to needs. Thank you.

If you want to know more, I will be sharing here at STA at 7 pm on Monday night. But I also want to share our pastor’s invitation for you to come and see, “a land soaked with sorrow and tears, but also with tenacious sweat; marked by the footprints of death but also with the firm footsteps of Christ crucified and risen,” I can assure you that you will find a people who will welcome you with the love that casts out fear.

Saint Francis facing the Lateran Basilica

There is a beautiful sculpture facing the church of San John Lateran in Rome. It depicts Francis and his companions who in 1209 went to get approval of their way of life from the Pope who, at that time, lived in the Lateran Palace.

Here are a few photos.

These photos may be reproduced with acknowledgement of source if reproduced for non-lucrative purposes.

The diakonia of Saint Francis of Assisi

As I prepare for the feast of St. Francis tomorrow, I began reflecting this morning on how Francis can lead me to be a better deacon.

It is probable that Francis was a deacon. But even if he wasn’t, his life shows the call to diakonia of all the baptized.

As I understand the diaconate, we are called to serve, to accompany, to be with those at the margins of our church and our world. In a special, sacramental way, we are called to bring the needs of the poor to the table of the Lord and the gifts of the table of the Lord to them.

We are called to make clear the bridge that exists between the church and the world. As Msgr.  Paul McPartlan wrote, “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.”  I slightly revised this to reflect my experience, “The deacon serves at the table of the altar with clean hands because he has dirtied his hands serving at the table of the poor.”

We deacons do this not just at Mass, reading the Gospel, occasionally preaching, preparing the altar, and distributing communion. We do this in our daily work, in our daily contact with the poor and marginalized, in our preaching by lives of service, justice, and love.

When I think of Saint Francis, I see him among the poor, not neglecting to preach in the highways and byways of his world, not failing to enter and pray in churches.

For me it is interesting that his conversion is marked by two events – his encounter with the leper and the call to repair the church which he heard in the church of San Damiano. 

The church and friary of San Damiano

Then he began to repair any number of churches, but still in contact with the poor and the marginalized.  He also began to preach – not just by his words but by his deeds.

But he always had a soft spot in his heart for the marginalized, especially the lepers. In his Testament he pointedly wrote:

The Lord granted me, Brother Francis, to begin to do penance in this way: While I was in sin, it seemed very bitter to me to see lepers. And the Lord Himself led me among them and I had mercy upon them. And when I left them that which seemed bitter to me was changed into sweetness of soul and body…

Face of a poor man. Detail of a statue near San Damiano.

And so, tomorrow I will renew my ministry. I will celebrate the feast in a Franciscan way, assisting at Mass in the morning and preaching and then having dinner with the Dubuque Franciscan sisters here in Honduras.

Francis, renew in me, the spirit of Christ the servant, who emptied himself and became flesh for love of us.