What's so good about Good Friday???

Today, I am honored to post a guest blog post from my friend Julie Mulherin. Julie’s friendship has been an incredible blessing to me: she has challenged and encouraged me in my passion of working for a more just world and she helped me fall in love with El Salvador.  I hope her reflections will bless you as we anticipate the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection.

What is so “good” about Good Friday? Nothing, without the anticipation of Easter Sunday. It is really the resurrection in which we find joy, rebirth, and goodness. While reflecting on Good Friday, I find it is amazing that God gave his only son to die. It was quite a sacrifice even knowing that Easter Sunday was on the way. For Jesus, Good Friday must have been incredibly painful as he gave himself and died the most perfect death in order to save humanity.

What makes it even more astonishing to me is that Jesus walks hand in hand with humanity everyday, even when it means crucifixion over and over again.  I can’t imagine how difficult and painful it was the first time, but Jesus’ love is so encompassing, he is re-crucified everyday with his suffering children.  

Using the backdrop of Holy Week to reflect on my experiences in El Salvador, I think I began to understand some of my experiences more clearly. It is quite difficult to articulate what my experiences in El Salvador mean to me and how they affect my life. I have spent a good amount of time reflecting with some wonderful people about what it is about El Salvador that is so special. Dean Brackley describes Salvadorans and others in poverty as having “something” that draws people back. What is that “something”? I can feel it, and at times I describe it differently. This week, however, I feel a strong connection with that “something” and the Easter story.

I have always loved my time in El Salvador, the culture, and the people. Sometimes people are surprised to hear that I could have such a love for such an impoverished country and people.  Jon Sobrino, a Spanish liberation theologian who has lived most of his life in El Salvador working at the Jesuit University, argues that the Western world uses too soft of vocabulary when talking about the impoverished world. Sobrino feels that terms like “the developing world” and “the Third World” don’t give justice to the suffering experience. Rather, he argues we should use the term “crucified people” because it more accurately reflects the reality.  In this way, I have seen first hand and have heard how people are crucified everyday in El Salvador. Crucifixion looks different than it does in our Good Friday story, but it is crucifixion nonetheless. It includes children dying of hunger, families working their hardest to barely survive, children being forced into gangs, human trafficking, rape victims, and countless senseless murders. The injustices of poverty cause crucifixion everyday, and Jesus walks along with these crucified people.

At the Jesuit University in El Salvador there is the most beautiful and quaint chapel with original Salvadoran artwork. In the back of the chapel there is artwork of the Salvadoran Stations of the Cross. These stations are sketches of dead, tortured bodies that were found during the Salvadoran Civil War from 1980-1992. The chapel chooses these pictures to show the Stations of the Cross because they depict that Jesus was being tortured along with these countless people. The fifteenth station, of resurrection, however, is missing. I have heard many different guides share different perspectives on why this last station, and arguably the most important station, is missing. The explanation that sticks out the most in my mind is that these stations represent the Salvadoran stations, and the Salvadoran people have not resurrected yet.

As I think about this, I can only partially agree. The people of El Salvador have not resurrected yet, fully. With the Salvadorans I await and pray for a full resurrection that ends the injustices facing the Salvadoran people. Even so, I have witnessed partial resurrections happening everyday. Resurrections are happening in a way, but we must await the final resurrection: they are already buy not yet.  When we think about Good Friday trying to put ourselves in the story is difficult, but we understand Jesus went through pain beyond our comprehension. Through this story, as tragic as it is, we see that glimmer of hope. We know the resurrection is on its way.

As I describe my experiences in El Salvador, I realize it can sound quite morbid, spending time to get to know and love a crucified people.  However, there is that “something” that pulls me back. I think that “something” is that same “something” we all experience throughout the Holy Week experience. On Good Friday it is the glimmer of hope. It is knowing that the resurrection is coming, that in fact, it is already happening. When in El Salvador, although surrounded by the crucifixion, I also feel surrounded by the resurrection. I see the resurrection in they eyes of a student who is able to go to school with a scholarship. I see it in a church that is brave enough to publically denounce injustices harming its people. I see it in a family who takes in an orphaned child even as they are struggling to survive themselves. I see the resurrection in groups of Americans who are transformed by their experiences in El Salvador ready to fight for a more peaceful world, ready to do their part to create the Kingdom of God here on Earth. I see the resurrection in the strength of a family who is ready to testify about crimes committed against them.  I see it in the Salvadorans drive to survive and their ultimate trust in the Lord.  Already, but not yet.

It is through my experiences in El Salvador that I am able to begin to understand what the original Holy Week was truly like. In my middle-class suburban life, the suffering of Good Friday seemed foreign to me. I was ready to jump right to Easter and find all those Easter eggs. It is through the stories and relationships I have with my Salvadoran friends turned family that I have really been able to understand the Suffering Christ. Without this understanding of the suffering, the joy of Easter seems watered-down. The joy of resurrection becomes richer and fuller with a more complete understanding of the crucifixion.

How humbling it is to be at the foot of the cross understanding the pain and suffering, but knowing the resurrection is coming. It is this feeling that pulls me back to El Salvador year after year. It is the resurrection amidst the pain of the world that inspires me! It is that taste of rebirth that drives me to El Salvador. I pray for the complete resurrection of this world.

Love is Really Messy

Love is a word that gets thrown around a lot. 

I love ice cream.  I love my new car.  I love that TV show.  I love your shoes.

We use the word “love” in this superficial sense far too often. 

Most commonly the word “love” gets used as an emotion.  But the deeper meaning of love is not something you feel toward another person or something, but rather love is an action.

Love is doing anything to care for any person in need.

If I’ve learned anything about love, it’s that love is messy.  Loving other people is complicated, difficult, complex, problematic, challenging, demanding, tough, and risky.  Just really messy.

There are a lot of people in this world who need to be loved.  There is a lot of pain, a lot of suffering, a lot of hurting people in our communities.

Trying to love people can be exhausting in every way possible- physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.

Figuring out how and who to love keeps me up at night.

How can I possibly love everyone who needs to be loved?  How does one prioritize who needs to be loved?

How can I love people while making sure I’m not taken advantage of or I don’t completely exhaust myself?

When is “tough” love what is really needed?

How do I make sure that what I’m doing for someone is actually showing them love and not just hurting them more?

What if not everyone agrees with the way I think love should be shown to people?  Do I risk destroying a relationship with someone so that someone else can be loved? 

I think and pray hard and long trying to figure out how to love.  I have made mistakes when I thought I was doing or saying the right thing but really I wasn’t.  I have hurt people who I only intended to love.  I haven’t and won’t love perfectly.  My past mistakes and my fear of doing something wrong in the future, my fear of not loving enough or of loving too much or loving the wrong way, tempts me to give up.  Am I or anyone else really making any progress in caring for people in need?  Is it really worth it???

I get caught up in this thinking far too easily.  I have to remind myself again and again that all I can do is try as hard as I can to love people in the right way with the knowledge and resources I have right now.  And I pray that God will pick up the pieces, that somehow God will use my imperfect, failed attempts at loving people and will transform those attempts into something more beautiful than I could ever imagine.  This is love.

33 years ago today, a man who understood perfectly what it means to love, a man who lived and died loving other people, Archbishop of San Salvador Oscar Romero, became a martyr.  The prayer below, Prophets of a Future Not Our Own, often called the “Romero Prayer”, has been one of those things that helps remind me that love is worth it and that God is entering in and transforming the world.  

PROPHETS OF A FUTURE NOT OUR OWN

by Fr. Ken Untener 

It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.

The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,

it is even beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the

magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.

Nothing we do is complete,

which is another way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us.

No statement says all that could be said.

No prayer fully expresses our faith.

No confession brings perfection, no pastoral visit brings wholeness.

No program accomplishes the Church’s mission.

No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about.

We plant the seeds that one day will grow.

We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.

We lay foundations that will need further development.

We provide yeast that produces effects far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything,

and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.

This enables us to do something,

and to do it very well.

It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning,

a step along the way,

an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results, but that is the difference

between the master builder and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders,

ministers, not messiahs.

We are prophets of a future not our own.

Romero's Challenge for us Today

“It costs so much to be a full human being that there are few who have the enlightenment to pay the price.” –Morris West

Yesterday I had the opportunity to go to an event near Milwaukee on Oscar Romero.  Oscar Romero was the Catholic Archbishop of El Salvador from 1977 until March 24, 1980, when he was assassinated for speaking out against the injustice and violence being waged in El Salvador by the Salvadoran military and government against the people (see my post from a few years ago for more details about Oscar Romero).

Many of the speakers and conversations at the event yesterday focused on Romero’s conversion or transformation- the process that brought Romero to be a full human and to pay the price for living life so fully.

Oscar Romero never ceases to amaze, inspire, and encourage me.  As I learn more about Romero’s life, I’m finding it is the way he lived his life more than the way he died that challenges and inspires me.

How did Romero have the enlightenment to pay the price for being a full human being?  How can we take steps in the right direction of becoming a full human being and how do we get this enlightenment?

Here’s what we can learn from Romero:

Romero was so in touch with God.  He was a man of prayer, he prayed constantly and in all circumstances.  Romero’s driver told a story about the time Romero was involved in mediating a hostage situation.  Romero was praying, but stopped to ask the driver what he should do if someone started shooting in this tense situation.  The driver advised Romero to dive behind a ledge.  Romero went on praying and then paused to ask the driver if this would really work.  The driver answered (only partly joking) that yes, diving behind the ledge would protect Romero if he could stop praying for a moment to do so.  Above all, Romero knew God is the ultimate source of all strength.    

Today we must somehow find that connection with God through prayer, reflection, and scripture.  Only through an intimate connection with God can we ever hope to even know what God is trying to bring about here on earth. 

Romero was open to seeing and learning about the difficult and painful reality of the world.  Romero spent countless hours with people listening to their stories of grief and suffering and Romero traveled all around El Salvador seeing for himself the conditions and situations people were living in.  I can only imagine how painful this was for Romero to learn about and see the suffering of thousands of people.  Romero could have spent his life reading books and saying mass, but instead, he stepped out of his comfortable “bubble.”  

Today we must seek out the truth about the harsh realities of the world.  There is so much injustice in the world (including in our own communities), and we must educate ourselves and learn the truth, otherwise we have no chance of ending injustice.

Romero spent his time with the people who were suffering the most and the people who were nearest to death.  As the head of the Catholic Church in El Salvador, Romero could have very easily spent his time with the religious, political, and societal leaders of the country- the wealthy and the powerful.  However, Romero chose to live in a cancer hospital for the poor.  He chose to spend his time visiting poor rural communities.  He chose to devote his time to working for justice for people who were suffering and dying at the hands of the wealthy and powerful.   

Today we must ask ourselves: Where have we planted our feet and with whom do we spend our time?  Do we spend our time with the kind of people Jesus spent his time with, those people who are rejected by society?  We have so much to learn from the people who society rejects.

And finally, Romero did all this in community.  Romero had the direct and indirect support of fellow priests and the Salvadoran people.  Romero drew courage and strength from the Salvadoran people, and likewise, the Salvadoran people found strength in seeing Romero work to bring about a better world.  Three decades after his death, Romero continues to be a source of hope for the Salvadoran people.

Today we can’t do anything unless we do it together.  People of all countries, ages, races, economic levels, religions, denominations, etc. must join together to encourage each other to live more fully as humans. 

The life of Oscar Romero challenges us to continue the journey Romero set out on- to focus on Jesus in the deep darkness of this world and thus find the Light.