How can I preach the Lucan beatitudes to the poor?

In the Gospel for this coming Sunday, we hear the beatitudes and woes of Luke 6: 20-26.

Blessed are you who are poor
Woe to you who are rich

Blessed are you who are hungry
Woe to you who are stuffed

Blessed are you who weep
Woe to you who are laughing

How can I preach “Blessed are you who are poor,” when I know that there are people here, perhaps in the church, who struggle to eat?

What can I say to them?

Yes, most of the people in the celebrations in the countryside are poor, but some have a dream of escaping poverty by going to the US to earn lots of money. Though poor, some have the dream of the rich, to be completely self-sufficient. They are willing to endure the nightmare of passing through Mexico to try to reach the US.

This is not to deny that those who are trying to enter the US are more often those who are trying to escape the violence and the poverty, the misery, that affects the lives of many in Honduras.

Those who live in the cities experience the violence of the gangs and drug-traffickers, as well as the repression of those who try to speak out against the rampant injustice. Throughout the country there is continuing violence of many other kinds – domestic violence, especially against women; violence due to conflicts over land or other issues; violence due to people seeking vengeance for crimes committed against their families; violence connected with abuse of alcohol or drugs as well as the large number of weapons. This is exacerbated by the lack of a justice and police system that investigates and prosecutes crimes. But others are leaving and seeking refuge in the US because of extreme poverty and the worsening of the economic situation. They are seeking to improve the lives of their families.

Of course there are some who leave seeking adventure or seeking money to live comfortably in the future. But violence and poverty, in a political situation of ineptitude and corruption and an economic situation of extreme inequality, are the driving forces for the migration.

But what do I say about the Gospel to those who are here?  More than two-thirds in the country live in poverty, perhaps 40% in extreme poverty.

I think the message has to be a message of hope: Jesus has a vision that turns this world upside down.

Jesus does not invite the poor to be rich, but to live the kingdom. When the poor are really poor, living austerely, they are more likely to be living the Kingdom. When the poor are impoverished, they have been deprived of even the little they need to live as people of worth.

What is the kingdom? What are the signs of the kingdom? Share, care, trust.

What signs of the kingdom have I seen here?

• People caring for their sick or elderly relatives.
• Communities regularly responding to the needs of the poor, collecting basic food supplies and taking up collections to pay for expensive medicines or medical treatments.
• People donating money to buy land for a homeless family.
• People stopping to help me start my car when it broke down.
• Communion ministers walking for hours to bring Communion to the sick.
• Groups of young people who visit the sick.
• Poor people almost never turning aside from someone who asks for help, even if it’s only one lempira (about four cents).
• Offering food to whoever is in the house, even a crazy gringo.

I would suggest that when Jesus says the Kingdom belongs to the poor he is asking us to look at our communities:

• Are they selfish, concerned only with my well-being? Or are they place where people share?
• Are they communities where the poor and the marginalized are welcomed as full members of the community
• Are they places where people accompany those who mourn or are they only concerned about themselves?
• Are they places where the hungry are fed? Or, better, are they places where we all sit down together to eat, poor and not poor?

So, what can I preach?

• Be communities that welcome all.
• Avoid the temptation to accumulate.
• Share in the joys and sorrows of all.
• Above all, place your trust in God, who is a God of life and hope, and live as participants in the Kingdom of God.

I’m not sure that’s what I’ll preach – but it’s what’s moving my heart tonight.

Serve in mission

Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B

Notes for a homily at Masses at St. Thomas Aquinas Church and Catholic Student Center, Ames, Iowa, the sister parish of la Parroquia Dulce Nombre de María, Dulce Nombre de Copán, Honduras.

Isaiah 53:10-11
Hebrews 4:14-16
Mark 10:35-45

I come to you, with deep gratitude, from your sister parish in Honduras, Dulce Nombre de María – for your generosity, for your prayers, for your concern. Our pastor, Father German Navarro, sends you his prayers and thanks.

Our parish, in the mountains of southwest Honduras, has over fifty towns and villages, most with their own church where Delegates of the Word lead Sunday Celebrations of the Word. Catechists help form the children and prepare them for the sacraments. Twenty-nine Communion ministers bring communion to the sick and communion at Sunday celebrations.

I come back this week to St. Thomas, where I served for almost twenty-three years as a lay campus minister, also involved in the parish social ministry. I have been eleven years in Honduras. Two years ago I was ordained a permanent deacon, the first in our diocese, the third in Honduras. I have been serving in some way with the Dulce Nombre parish for almost all my time in Honduras. Now I live in the parish.

Last Sunday I was among about 100 deacons serving at the Mass of the Canonizations of Monseñor Oscar Romero, Pope Paul VI, and five others. When I got the tickets for my pastor and me, I thought this would just be a chance to be close to the Pope. But it ended up that we deacons served, by carrying the Body and Blood of Christ to the thousand or so priests there. We were there to serve.

It is so easy to want to have the best seats in the house – or the seats of power in the Kingdom, as James and John wanted. But the message of Jesus is that we are to serve as he does: “I came not to be served, but to serve, and to give me life as a ransom for many.”

Saint Clare washing the feet of her nuns

The temptation to power and dominion is strong, even in the church – as we have seen recently. But the commitment to serve is also present. I would say it is especially present among the laity who give themselves in service to their families, to those in need, and to the poor.

I think of Adolfo, one of our extraordinary ministers of communion in our parish. Basically illiterate, he walks at least once a week to several of the villages in his part of the parish, bringing communion, most of all to the sick and homebound.

I think of the people who give a day to help out in the parish coffee fields, which St. Thomas helped buy a few years ago. They come, putting aside their own work or a chance to get paid work, and get nothing but lunch. I also recall the women who come and work in the parish kitchen to prepare meals for our parish formation programs

And then there were the forty-two men and women, including five young people, who gave a whole week in mission last month, visiting homes of the sick and those estranged from the church and society. This is our third year of these week-long missions which have borne fruit, including the number of couples married in the church.

This service is not something that is done out of mere idealism or good will, as important as these may be. We make real formation efforts to help our parishioners recognize their calling to accompany the poor and needy as Christ was made flesh and made himself poor, to accompany the suffering.

And there is suffering.

A medical brigade from St. Louis has been coming to our area and I often help them with translating. This last time, an older woman brought her eleven-year old son with Down’s Syndrome, to get some medical attention. He had never seen a doctor in his life.

A more tragic tale is of a man in his early thirties who committed suicide. He had serious mental health problems and was taking medicine. But the medicine ran out and he could not get it locally. It was only available in the capital, about 6 hours away, for about $200. And he could not get the money, even on loan. As I see it, he did not kill himself; the lack of medical care killed him.

Medical care is hard to come by in our parish and it is expensive to get to the hospital and special clinics in the nearby city of Santa Rosa. At times people pay about seventy dollars for the trip. This is in country where over 65% earn less than two dollars a day. With a generous donation of St. Thomas, our parish purchased a car to make these trips for the cost of fuel and a small stipend for the driver. We are also asking each sector of the parish to set up a process to have funds available when the family cannot afford even this. Carro San Rafael is a blessing that you have given us.

The problems are many – lack of easy access to high school education is one. The donations for scholarships to a weekend program have helped.

The cost of living, especially the cost of basic foods, has risen. Fuel costs for vehicles and propane have also gone up significantly. There is also massive unemployment and those who work on the land do not get a good price for their products. Coffee is getting about75 cents a pound. Buying El Zapote coffee helps 14 families who get more than twice this.

Thus there are many people who get into debt – sometimes for their farming costs. In addition, this year some crops have been affected by near-drought conditions, affecting the lives of farmers.

Our area does not have the violence in the cities and other areas affected by gangs and drug-trafficking, but there have been cases of violence, often related to a cycle of vengeance that is exacerbated by a justice system that doesn’t work.

No wonder people flee, seeking an escape from desperation, from poverty, from violence.

In all this we need to turn to the advice of Pope Francis and to the witness of the saints who call us to accompany the poor and take on their cause as our own. As the recently canonized Oscar Romero of El Salvador said:

“The church, in its zeal to convert to the gospel, is seeing that its place is by the side of the poor, of the outraged, of the rejected, and that in their name it must speak and demand their rights.”

We do this – not just in Honduras, but here in Ames – because we seek to serve as the Lord calls us, even more as the Lord Jesus himself is.

We need to recover in our prayer lives the image of Christ the Servant, for, as the letter to the Hebrews notes, “we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has similarly been tested in every way, yet without sin.” He sympathizes with our weakness, identifying with those at the margins. Jesus, in his sufferings justified many, calls us to have compassion, to literally suffer with those who suffer.

We need to recover the place of service in our lives as followers of Christ the servant.

As Martin Luther King said, we need to recover a new definition of greatness, not the greatness of power and position that James and John sought.

And so Jesus gave us a new norm of greatness. If you want to be important—wonderful. If you want to be recognized—wonderful. If you want to be great—wonderful. But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. That’s a new definition of greatness.

…by giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great, because everybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don’t have to know Einstein’s theory of relativity to serve. You don’t have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love. And you can be that servant.

All of us can be that servant. Your mission field may not be Honduras. But you have a mission here in central Iowa – to serve those you love, to serve even your enemies, and most all of to serve those at the margins. There we can encounter Christ. There we can find true greatness. For there we can serve as the Lord serves.

This may not be easy. It may be costly. It cost Monseñor Romero his life, but as he wrote a month before he was martyred:

My disposition ought to be to give my life for God, whatever might be the end of my life. The circumstances which are unknown will be lived with God’s grace. He attended the martyrs and, if it is necessary, I will feel him very close when I hand over my last breath to him. But more valiant than the moment of death is to hand over to him all one’s life and live for Him.

In your family, in your work, in your play, be a servant.

Quinceanera homily

Today I will preside at a quinceanera, the celebration of the fifteenth birthday of your women. We don’t have a lot of these celebrations in our parish – and they are often accompanied by Mass, but our pastor has commitments in the diocese and asked me to preside.

I have done it once before and found a beautiful ceremony. But these readings really touch me: Isaiah 43: 1-4; Psalm 139 (138), John 15: 9-17.

Here are my notes – in English for my homily this afternoon.

You are a child of God – a daughter of God. You are made in the image of God.

Today as you celebrate your quinceanera, remember that your worth, your dignity, your value do not depend on what you look like, what you do, what you wear, who your friends are.

Do not fear if you don’t have what others have. Do not fear if you are not as wise, as pretty, as popular as other young women.

You are a precious jewel in the eyes of God. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, “you are of great value and I love.”

God made you – and no one is like you. “You are marvellously made,” formed by God from your mother’s womb, “knitted in her womb,” as the psalmist says.

And that is good. God loves us and we should not fear.

But it is not enough.

God calls each of us to love, to give ourselves to others as Jesus gave himself for us. We do not show who we are by what we look like, but by the way we love, the way we live out the dignity we have as children of God, as friends of God.

You, and every one of us here today, are chosen by God.

And so “let us love each other.”

Saying yes to being a slave

The great mystery of God’s compassion is that in his compassion,
in his entering with us into the condition of a slave,
he reveals himself to us as God.
Henri Nouwen

Sunday I preached in two different communities.

Though I referred to the Gospel and the reading from Ezekiel, I concentrated on Paul’s letter to the Philippians 2: 1-11. It is a marvelous reading to share with a community, especially communities struggling with divisions. Deepen my joy, Paul tells the Philippians by having the mind and heart of Christ – being one in spirt, one in love, one in your aspirations. Christ didn’t cling to his divine power but, emptying himself he became a slave.

Yes, the Greek word is slave, δοῦλος – not servant/attendant, διάκονος. We often hear it as servant, which is fine, but “slave”? You’ve got to be kidding? That’s nearly incomprehensible.

As Henri Nouwen well puts it, but in terms of “servant”:

Our God is a servant God. It is difficult for us to comprehend that we are liberated by someone who became powerless, that we are strengthened by one who became powerless, that we find new hope in someone who divested himself of all distinctions, and that we find a leader in someone who became a servant. (Compassion: A Reflection on the Christian Life, p. 24)

But I was not ready to be taught what this means.

In the morning I went to preside at a Celebration of the Word and Communion in the village of San Marcos Las Pavas. It is one of most remote communities in the parish, about an hour from my house. The final leg of the journey is an uphill ride with lots of curves. As I turned the curve before the church. I was stopped in my tracks. The road was impassible; because of the heavy rains a landslide left only a small, muddy path to get to the church.

When I got the church my hands and shoes were muddy. As I stopped to wash my hands, an older man who I think is mentally challenged asked to wash my shoes. At first, I was reluctant and even began washing them myself. But then I remembered that Peter tried to stop Jesus from washing his feet. Whom am I to not let this humble man serve me?

As I preached later about Jesus the servant, the slave of all, I made a reference to this man. He showed me the face of God – not in his poverty, but in his service. He is teaching me to drop on my knees to God as well as to wash the feet and shoes of others. He is teaching me to let myself be served, to let myself be vulnerable. He is opening me to see Jesus in entirely new ways.

Notes for a baptism homily

This afternoon I’ll be preaching and baptizing in the aldea of El Zapote Santa Rosa. Praying over today’s readings I find them pertinent for baptizing new members of our church.

Hebrews 8: 6-13
Mark 3: 13-19

Here are some notes, in English, for my homily.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus calls his twelve apostles – by name. We just called these young children by name – to welcome them into the Body of Christ. They do not come as a group, nor as anonymous. They come as persons with a name.

And they will be welcomed into a community, which experiences the new covenant that the Letter of the Hebrews speaks of.

They will be welcomed and baptized into Christ, not only to free them from sin but also to welcome them into a new relationship with God. As the prophet Jeremiah recalls the promise of God:  “I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”

It is a relationship of deep intimacy. God’s way, God’s law – the law of love – will not be an external commandment constraining them. It will be written in their hearts and when they  live it they will be free.

We need to welcome these young people. But, even more, we need to live that covenant, that law of love, so that they can grow in love.

We need to be people of love, of solidarity, deeply in love with Jesus and open to love as he did – even loving our enemies. We need to have a community here in El Zapote where these children will see the New Covenant at work, where all know the Lord, from the least unto the greatest.

And so, we will now baptize these young people into Christ Jesus, so that they may God’s people and show forth signs of God’s Reign here in El Zapote.