October 2004 | Vol. 40 No 10 | Index
 

From the Director…

Dear Mission Friends,

In this season of autumn when nature begins to go into a deep sleep in order to awaken in the springtime with fresh new life, the Church invites us to reflect on the theme of life through death. November is the month of All Souls Day (El Dia de Los Muertos in Mexico) and the time when we remember in prayer all of our faithful departed.

Many of us have lost a beloved family member or friend during this past year. On February 9 of this year, my first cousin, Jack McConnell, died in Providence, Rhode Island. He left his loving wife, Jane, and six wonderful sons and six wonderful daughters-in-law and a host of grandchildren. It was an inspiring tribute to his life to witness people who had waited in the snow and cold outside the mortuary to pass by his coffin for three hours. As we approach the month of November, please be assured of the prayers of our missionaries for all of your beloved family members and friends who have died. For all of us who have lost a loved one through death, let us find hope through the following prayer written many years ago by an English Dominican friar, Fr. Bede Jarrett, O.P.:

Death is Only An Horizon

We give them back to you, O Lord,

who first gave them to us;

and as you did not lose them in giving,

so we do not lose them in the return.

 

Not as the world gives do you give,

O Lover of souls.

For what is yours is ours also,

if we belong to you.

 

Life is unending

because love is undying,

and the boundaries of this life are but an horizon,

and an horizon is but the limit of our vision.

 

Lift us up, strong Son of God,

that we may see further.

Strengthen our faith

that we may see beyond the horizon.

 

And while you prepare a place for us,

as you have promised,

prepare us also for that happy place;

that where you are we may be also,

with those we have loved, forever. 

In Christ’s Peace,
Fr Martin de Porres Walsh OP

In Giving I Received More
Mexicali Summer
Ministry Experience
By Br. Jeremiah Loverich, O.P.

he summer evening settles over Poblado Compuertas with its lingering smells of exhaust, burning trash, and fumes from the nearby maquiladores.  The triple- digit heat begins to abate.  I bid goodbye to the RCIA class that I facilitated every evening with a team of several parishioners – Don Pablo, the grandfather figure; soft-spoken, prayerful Doña Magda; enthusiastic Gustavo and Gabi, who also direct one of the parish choirs; and a handful of others including a member of the youth group.  I get in the pick-up and several kids climb in the back for a ride home.  They live on the other side of the parish, several miles from the main church.  The headlights wrestle  with   the  ubiquitous dust hovering above the half-paved streets and lurch around the potholes.

 had talked about the Bible and the history of salvation – that story of the promise of salvation, that story of an enslaved people freed from bondage and led through the desert by the Lord’s own hand long ago in a land far away, that story that is their story, our story, in the desert of Mexicali.  Here the people are poor – struggling to make ends meet in an economy of inflated prices due to its proximity to the United States, in an economy where minimum wage is not enforced, wearing only second-hand clothes, driving tired cars on crumbling roads, sharing a three-room   house  with   ten other family and extended family members.  Here the people thirst for catechesis – although most Mexicans are culturally Catholic, many lack a deep understanding of the faith and the liturgy.  Yet in doing what I could to share the fruits of my studies with them, it is I who am enriched.  Although I had spent most of the afternoon preparing the talk, it was their patience that saw through my stammered conjugations and mispronunciations and gave my words life.  It is their labor and love that sustain this parish.  I am blessed by their warmth and generosity.  Within a few weeks, I feel like family, and I carry memories that match: playing soccer in a park on a Sunday afternoon with the middle school youth group; going out to Chinese food with Alfredo, the sacristan, and his wife, Susana, and holding their 18-month-old son on my lap who gets more food on his face and shirt than in his mouth; talking to Javier (the most regular altar server at the parish) in the sacristy after Mass as he says he wants to be a priest and asks me not to leave Mexicali.

My morning routine typically consists of morning prayer and running various errands – shopping,  buying water,   car repairs, picking up the mail across the border, helping to set-up a new sound system in the Chapel of the Incarnation, and other chores.  After a late lunch, I work on preparing my talks for the evening RCIA classes or youth groups.  On Sundays I attend most of the Masses offered at the four different chapels the parish serves.  In all this it was the people that gave my work and study meaning.  It is encountering them in their needs, dreams, joys, and daily lives that makes my vocation as a friar preacher make sense.  I had talked to the youth group last Saturday about what it means to live a life of holiness, and it was after I had finished talking that I figured it out: I need to pray and study so that I can serve them better, I need to be holy, to love God more, so to love them more.

ear the end of my time here, Don Pablo, the carpenter who built some of the furniture for the church, invites me to his home for dinner.  He recalls all the Dominicans that have served here over the years.  He names each, one-by-one, tells a few stories, remembering who baptized or married which of his children    or    grandchildren. 

“Muy    buena     gente,”    he  muses, What good men.  He wants to know when I will be back.  Lord knows, I say.  Soon, I hope.  Remember, he says, my house is always yours. 

aking the confetti out of my hair at the despedida they threw for me the night before I left, I look down at my habit covered in red, blue, yellow, and green.  I think of Joseph’s coat of many colors.  How rich I feel to be here, to serve these people, to be part of their lives.  Mixed feelings of sadness and gratitude stir in me as I walk across the dirt courtyard toward the car.  A final “Buenas noches” echoes off the cracked stucco wall of the parish church.  “Igualmente,” I reply.  Yes, it is a good night indeed.