July 2004 | Vol. 40 No 7 | Index

God’s Work of Art
By Fr. Paul Scanlon, O.P.

We are all called to live and preach the truth of the good works God has prepared.

It was 120 degrees in the shade. A normal summer day for Mexicali, a sleepy Mexican village south of the California border that has burst its seams and now umbers over a million people. Farmers irrigate with the dregs of the Colorado River, foreign businesses string out their sweatshops along the barbed-wire barrier that divides two countries – two very distinct cultures.

We were gathered around in an arid open field where I had folded out the card table that would serve as our altar. What brought me here were the women who begged repeatedly, “Please, Father, come and say Mass for us,” until I finally yielded.

I then came one Sunday afternoon a month. The teenagers I had brought from the parish strummed away on their guitars, leading the assembled families in practicing a few hymns for Mass. The air I inhaled baked my throat. The dust from the field clogged my nose. A blazing sun charbroiled us.

I stood in the dry weeds a few feet away hearing confessions face to face with these humble people who were as hardened by life as were their adobe bricks which were baked by the sun. Giggling boys would admit having put frogs in their mothers’ beds or a garter snake in their sisters’ dresses. Men would own up to drunkenness and beating their wives and children. Poverty had beaten them down, made them feel useless. They were forced to live in cardboard and plywood houses because their patron paid them so little they couldn’t afford to use the very bricks they baked.

A sprinkling of about 30 families lived in this field where they baked bricks from the adobe soil on which they lived. No air conditioning. No running water. Few trees. They shared with each other whenever someone lacked food or clothing.

They always offered us frijoles and enchiladas. Juanita would slice off a stout leaf from the cactus growing next to her house and prepare it for us to eat, chopped up and oiled, filled with vitamins.

Mission Within a Mission

La Ladriellera, “The Brickyard,” was a mission within a mission. I invited a few adults and some youth from our nearby parish to accompany me each month to bring clothes, song and friendship to these humble people on the edge of society, an invitation to be Jesus to His beloved poor.

It gave joy and meaning, indeed, to our parishioners. But was it demeaning to the poor? Did it only make them feel like castoffs to receive castaway clothes? Could they see the sincerity that motivated their visitors?

Each Sunday that I shared with them the Scriptures, I struggled to find something to say that would bring them hope. What would Jesus tell them? As I read aloud the words of Mass, I sometimes wondered if they thought I was speaking a language from outer space. The theological nuances and niceties would have been lost on them.

Did they somehow sense Jesus’ presence? Did they grasp that, just as the helpless babe was present in that grungy feed trough in Bethlehem, that same Jesus was present now in this dry, thirsty field to offer them living water? Did they comprehend that they were as welcome as the first grubby shepherds? What to say to them?

The answer struck me one May 3, the Mexican date for the Feast of the Holy Cross, the patronal feast of carpenters and bricklayers.

Driving by a building under construction, I spotted a large wooden cross that had been hastily fastened onto the structure by the workers. The words of St. Paul flashed through my mind: “You have been purchased at a great price.” Jesus had stretched out His arms to embrace us, to call us to be His brothers and sisters, to be His family.

Just as Francis gave dignity to the leper by his kiss, so Jesus gives us acceptance and dignity by purchasing us at the cost of His very blood, sharing our lives, inviting us to share His life in turn. We remind ourselves of this embrace at each Mass, as at the offertory the celebrant, pouring a few drops of water into the wine, whispers: “By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Him who humbled himself to share our humanity.” Human dignity is the offspring of this intermarriage; concern for social justice is its guardian.

“The poor you will always have with you,” Jesus said. Which one of us is not poor? Which one of us does not hunger for love, acceptance and worth? Who has not experienced moments of self-doubt, been crushed by feelings of worthlessness?

In the competitive American society in which we live there is so much pressure to win, to succeed, to be popular. Failure is a terrible disgrace: failure at marriage, loss of a home, being fired at work, a debilitating illness. All are devastating. Sexual abuse, marital bashing, poverty – all erode a sense of worth and dignity.

It is because of His own experience of rejection, of what seemed like total “failure” hanging there naked on the cross, that Jesus becomes the epitome of compassion.

Long before the bishops of Latin America made a “referential option for the poor,” Jesus had chosen the humble of the earth to share in the riches of His love. He is always at our side in those dreadful moments of life to remind us that we are indeed loved, that we are His family. Royal blood flows in our veins.

Crucial to spiritual growth is the acceptance of this truth – we are God’s beloved. Why do we reject this love as did Peter: “Leave me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.” Is it because we fear it will call us to a true conversion of life and we aren’t up to the task? Why do we blind ourselves to the dignity and beauty that God has poured into us? Is it that we cannot admit to ourselves that we are lovable?

Years of hearing confessions, spiritual direction, and pastoral ministry have revealed to me that there is in us a strong sense of guilt, of self-dislike: “Lord I am not worthy.” Why do we prefer to wallow in this self-pity?

Jesus’ desire is to call us forth from this tomb as He did Lazarus, to free us from our fears, self-doubt, self-pity, that we might grow and blossom for His glory. If we think we are but junk, we will behave like junk. If we realize we are loved, we will give life to one another. We will treat each other and ourselves with the dignity all deserve.

No one is junk even if they live in junkyards, as some of my former parishioners do. “For we are His work of art, created in Christ Jesus for the good works that God has prepared in advance, that we should live them.” You are fashioned by the tender hands of God. The Artist who crafted Orion and the Pleiades, the Grand Canyon and Yosemite Park, fashions each of us with love and skill. Can I embrace that truth? Can I preach that with conviction?