Contrariamente a como lo vivieron los místicos del pasado, “la huida del mundo” no lleva al creyente a ser santificado en la verdad, es la inserción en todas las dimensiones del mundo lo que nos permite vivir lo mas autentico de la fe cristiana.
En plena confrontación de la fe naciente con la expresión mas sistemática de la cultura griega, el mejor camino que encontró la teología cristiana para elaborar y vivir su fe fue acoger críticamente las estructuras de pensamiento y organización que el mundo pagano aportaba.
Los padres apologistas griegos son, en su propio proceso personal e intelectual, un laboratorio, donde se crea una visión de fe con los materiales filosóficos de una cultura para quien la fe es prácticamente irrelevante.
Nuestra gente creyente vive encarnada en el “mundo” y desde ahí esta llamada a “elaborar”su fe. El vaticano segundo sospecho esto pero no pudo, o no quiso, sacar sus consecuencias. No todas las estructuras eclesiales ayudan ni forman a sus miembros para esta tarea.
Toda la historia y la vida ha seguido un modelo de sincretización, en lugar de procesos de gheto o de “burbujas” de aislamiento y purismo. Las actuales culturas humanas han sido resultado de sorprendentes sincretismos. No pueden sostenerse paradigmas únicos en la búsqueda de la verdad.
Jesús pide al Padre que sus discípulos sean santificados en la verdad. Un término apreciado por la comunidad joanica, que busca enlazar la propuesta evangélica de Jesús y la practica del seguimiento, por lo tanto no es un esfuerzo teórico por llegar a la verdad. Se trata de una manera de vivir. Las mejores síntesis vitales de este acercamiento a la verdad, nacieron en experiencias sincréticas: Los escritos del nuevo testamento son la mejor expresión de estas síntesis.
Bachelard, el epistemólogo racionalista, pensaba que la forma mas expedita para disponer al sujeto a la “verdad”, era someter el conocimiento al despojo de sus ideas erróneas. Porque cada intento de construir epistemológicamente la realidad, arrastra la historia de sus propios prejuicios. Similarmente, la aproximación creyente a la verdad pasa por la inserción en todas las dimensiones del “mundo”, aunque no este de acuerdo con sus estructuras. Tiene que asumirlas, haciendo la cuenta de todos los prejuicios contra el mundo, heredados en su experiencia de Iglesia. Todo lo real esta llamado a ser camino de humanización…para consagrar al discípulo en la verdad. Esto no es una estrategia de camuflaje, es una opción ineludible de abrirse al mundo con todas sus contradicciones, sin ser del mundo.
En este sentido quienes hemos sido formados/as para el servicio evangelizador, necesitamos reaprender el mensaje y la practica del evangelio en la vida de muchos creyentes sencillos. Son ellos y ellas quienes han vivido en carne propia aquello que quedo en reflexión teórica en el Vaticano II: Unir la fe y la vida, superar el divorcio de una fe que se alejo de la realidad cotidiana, abrazar el “mundo”, como terreno donde se cultiva el Reino.
Hombres y mujeres de fe que maduraron sus decisiones éticas (pensemos en la vivencia de su sexualidad matrimonial), en desacuerdo con la moral de la Iglesia.
Hombres y mujeres de fe que han apostado por compromisos políticos y luchas ideológicas, en solidaridad con comunidades empobrecidas y excluidas. Muchas veces acusados por autoridades eclesiales.
“El mundo”, la fuerza anti-reino, que odia al discípulo esta también ahí donde se proclama fidelidad al Dios de Jesucristo.
Ser amada/o incondicionalmente: Ahí se afirma lo más humano de toda persona.
La experiencia muestra lo quebradizo de este amor gratuito, con el que y por el que nacemos. Tanto es así que prevalecen en nuestro ser, en nuestra conciencia y nuestros cuerpos voces tenaces insistiendo que no somos personas dignas de ser amadas. La experiencia personal es ya difícil; pero cuando la persona escucha en volumen más alto estas voces, reflejadas por conductas sociales y en los medios de comunicación con carga de prejuicios, racismo y xenofobia, es más difícil... creer y, sobre todo, vivir sabiéndose amado/a.
Las comunidades jónicas vieron en Jesús una experiencia única: Aquel hombre de Nazaret vivía como un “bien amado”: Celebraba cada día un acontecimiento agapico. Era portador de ese “amor” que en la medida que afirma gratuitamente al otro/a, resulta a su vez plenificado/a. Tal vez por eso Jesús dice que ese “amor” es un dinamismo interpersonal: “Así como el Padre me ama, así los amo yo...ámense unos a otros”.
El/la discípulo/a se descubre escogido y amado antes de saberse capaz de amar... “No es que nosotros hayamos amado a Dios...es que El nos amo primero”. Parafraseando al maestro del Tao “cuando este amor es lo único que tengo, soy invencible”.
El movimiento migratorio mundial, visto desde el lado de la población que recibe, parece más una reacción de miedo. Quien llega no es solo un extraño, desde antes de llegar es visto como un enemigo. Hay una predisposición ética contra el otro.
Abrirse a la alteridad podría crear otros caminos que enriquecerían ambas partes del fenómeno migratorio. Solo quien vive la experiencia de ser “bienamado” puede romper todas las barreras.
Los miembros de la comunidad migrante inmediatamente reconocen, entre la población anglo, a aquellas personas sin prejuicios y acogedoras: Existen, en medio de la paranoia creada por la política xenofobica de la actual administración, personas anglo que viven la experiencia de ser “bien amadas/os”: Valoran a cada persona migrante en forma positiva y toman la iniciativa para salir a su encuentro, dispuestas a aprender de sus vidas…así afirman gratuitamente a quienes les son totalmente extraños, y se abre el ciclo enriquecedor del crecimiento en el encuentro y la colaboración mutua. Como fruto de una experiencia semejante la primitiva Iglesia llego a una hermosa conclusión: “Dios no hace distinción de personas…” (Hechos de los Apóstoles)
Tenemos que apostar por permanecer en este amor gratuito, que nos constituye y nos sostiene.
Para permanecer en el amor:
Experimenta lo mal que te hace sentir toda situación de discriminación, sin rechazarte a ti misma. Cuando permaneces abierta a estos sentimientos sabes que hay personas que no te aceptan por ser migrante, pero, al mismo tiempo, evocas el poder creativo del amor que el mismo Dios colocó en lo más profundo de ti y te afirma como digna de ser amada/o.
Dios que te amo primero, fue un extranjero que tomo la iniciativa y traspaso una frontera para convivir con personas diferentes…solo el amor autentico puede derrumbar cualquier frontera. Tú eres una persona enviada por ese Dios que pasa fronteras, cargas contigo un mensaje de transformación; repite constantemente este “mantra”:
“Yo soy una persona bien amada, he sido enviada a una misión”.
The survivors, after their passage through the desert, carried in their memories a new vision which they nurtured throughout their lives: to become free is a slow process, with no turning back, where God reveals Godself as passionate lover. When Hosea sees, many years afterwards, how the monarchy began to create a crisis by dividing communities and families— and how that divisiveness affected even the love between spouses… then the prophet rediscovers the spirituality of the desert precisely when he lives the crisis of marriage in his own flesh, through his wife’s infidelity, within the decadent atmosphere of the monarchy which drags down the entire Jewish people.
Only the persevering love, faithful and tenacious, of Hosea can reclaim his wife’s loving heart. Such fidelity transforms love into an authentic renovating force:… a love which was the same faithful response of God, passionately concerned for his people!
How to live the love between spouses and within families, in fidelity? How to believe in a God who passionately seeks his people? How to love one’s own identity and culture when the force of the situations to which one lives in bondage compels one to submit everything, even those things one holds close as one’s personal “belongings,” such as one’s family, such as the person one loves, such as the faith one has received, such as one’s cultural identity— when these become things transitory, without firm basis?
The whole of migrant experience is a true desert. (I am not speaking in metaphors.) There is suffering, there is loss of faith, there are infidelities and families torn apart— the nearness of death is evident. This experience deprives those who live it of nearly everything. They have to nurture a human and spiritual capacity for provisionality. They put their feelings to the test, they shake the very roots of their own faith. It isn’t true that those who reach their goal have more faith. Or that those who, once having swallowed a bitter draught, emerge purified. There is a shattering that defies the personality. You can no longer continue as you were. You have in your hands something that does not fit in the way you have experienced it up till now. That’s why you are tempted to put patches on your life or to place the new possibilities in old contexts, living them according to distorted visions and previous errors. But here also is where there is opportune territory for the experience of faith…another stage is begun, a new opportunity, something new can begin. The discovery of a faithful love (of God, of the family, of the spouse, of the community, of cultural inheritance) can provide a steady basis for the whole person… from here can arise a new man and a new woman.
“…I will bring you to the desert and I will speak to your heart…I will espouse you in justice and right, we will live in a fulfilled love.” (Hosea)
The boys and girls of the migrant community know all about the uncertainty and the menace of being persecuted and of seeing their parents deported. We adults see a bigger picture, no less menacing: the hardening and criminalization of immigration politics. In this poisonous atmosphere, the families of our migrant community turn increasingly to prayer and to their faith in God who called them to cross this desert as strangers, as witnesses to hope. The children of our community begin to pray just as the people of Israel did long ago: “My father was a wanderer, a migrant” (Deuteronomy 26:6).
In the hiddenness of their lives we are sure that a vocation throbs, a call by the God who comes to transform his people, by the God who brings men and women out of servitude to service.
In Livingston County an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe accompanies every family. They carry it home with them after our monthly Mass together— those same families who are passing through painful trials. Yet here is a challenge: While there is a significant migrant population in this region of the Diocese of Rochester, the number who gather with us to celebrate their faith is still small.
Every pastoral service we offer tries to promote people’s sense of responsibility and participation. Our Catholic Migrant Ministry considers this one of its most ambitious objectives. But because of the conditions in which the migrant community finds itself, this effort has been complex, defying simple solution.
Yet there have been signs of hope, gleams of light…
After a slow, patient process of faith formation, Lucila Romero (pastoral leader of the migrant community of Sodus) watches excitedly as Bishop Matthew presides over the calling-forth and sending of the Migrant Council of the Pastorate of Wayne County. This group’s effort, inspired by Sister Luci, brings its first fruits of service to the community by organizing and coordinating all its Advent and Lenten celebrations. On that Sunday, June 16, 2006, thirteen members of our community were amazed to discover that this work, this mission, had been placed in their hands and that the Bishop himself had put it there.
From then on, these couples are the ones who encourage and shape the community of Wayne County.
Other lights…
Meanwhile, on various Sundays through the year we team up with Deacons Jerry Skerrett and George Dardess, visiting various parishes in the Diocese to preside at Eucharist and to sketch the reality of migrant ministry. So now let me pause to express our gratitude to all the English-speaking communities that have hosted us. Their welcome and solidarity with migrant ministry sustains us and encourages us to continue. And of course I have to add that we have relied on their generous economic support.
Unexpected changes alter our paths. Migrants are accustomed to dealing with events outside their control. The only thing to do is to adapt as best you can and to keep moving ahead. And so with Catholic Migrant Ministry as well: We had to transform its face in Brockport. Right now the community there is welcoming a priest from the Dominican Republic, Fr. Alejandro Berroa Bello. Fr. Alejandro has joined our team in order to serve our community pastorally.
But also in Brockport has emerged a team from the migrant community dedicated to encouraging good liturgy and to planning events for the future. It still has a ways to go, but the team’s enthusiasm and desire to serve are already signs of how the fruits of ministry have been maturing all these years.
At the present time it is Sr. Sue Hoffman who is coordinating our ministry in Brockport, though her commitment is part-time. She and Fr. Alejandro nurture in their turn the vitality of the team of volunteers which has warmly welcomed them and is collaborating with both.
Lent finds us still in the middle of winter, but despite the cold and the snow I still find migrant friends, both men and women, laboring in the fields, pruning trees, and packing the produce of the previous season. They all carry in their memories the meaning of these intense and profound weeks of the liturgical year. “We can’t stop working, but we’ll bear the ashes to begin Lent faithfully.”
I have seen Xochitl and her team in Geneva preparing themselves to gather each week throughout Lent. “Missionary disciples,” is their slogan as well as their path. There is no better time to help bring to maturity the desire in the members of our community to be Christ’s disciples. If there is one thing sure in our community it is this: To the degree to which believers allow their identities as disciples to grow, to that same degree their commitment to mission becomes an imperative.
We make ourselves ready to celebrate both our Lord’s resurrection and our own, despite the fact that the current administration in Washington is not interested in improving the situation of migrant workers.
This Lenten season could be a good time for those who are politically active to influence positively a decision in favor of immigration reform. To find out more about the issue and to discover effective channels of action, visit the webpage of the North American bishops: www.justiceforimmigrants.org
I come from the northwestern desert of Mexico. In my part of the world it’s hard to find green fields. The rains are scanty. That’s why the green fields of western New York State amaze me, especially when the spring flowers burst into bloom everywhere. I look at the life of our migrant community and our migrant pastoral ministry as a contrast between desert and fertile land. Sterility and fertility persisting at the same time, hope and despair. It seems to me that our whole pastoral effort develops within this dynamic contrast. We believe that the Spirit acts tirelessly and effectively to strengthen our commitment while at the same time thousands of limitations and obstacles emerge that hinder the growth of the Kingdom of God among us. Our team of pastoral “apostles” take risks every day and every day put their faith in the fertility of the seed that flowers even in the driest, most barren ground and there bears fruit. Those who have ears, let them hear! Last March, without our being sure till the last moment that it would actually happen, Jaime Cortez gave a miniconcert for the migrant community of Sodus, New York. Luci, pastoral minister to the migrant community of Sodus, had been gathering together a large group of adolescents and young adults in order to teach them to play the guitar and sing. And now here’s Jaime Cortez, this outstanding musician and composer from Arizona, leading an intensive, inspiring workshop for that same group of thirty boys and girls! Since then, Luci, assisted by Dick Bolt, a teacher of music, has been molding the talents, encouraging the desires, and soothing the musical anxieties of those who will one day become the musical core of the liturgies and other celebrations of this community. On the other side of the diocese, in Brockport, I’ve sat in admiration of the rehearsals for the theatrical presentation of Jesus’ Passion. The Brockport migrant community’s pastoral minister, Sandra, encourages the participation of families, couples, youth, and children— people who, though they might not be actors, still desire to play roles in this work. On April 14th, on the evening of Good Friday, the live drama of the Passion moves the emotions of the attending community. That happens because the actors and actresses, though lacking previous experience, bring to life with deep feeling each one of the characters. The performance is a success. There is even a DVD available of this migrant version of the Lord’s Passion. I don’t have to tell you that migrant workers of both sexes experience a real drama and a real passion in their daily lives. Over in Geneva, at St Francis de Sales Church, I enjoy finding an enthusiastic group of young girls whom we’ve known since the time they were preparing for their First Communion. Now those same girls are members of the team that helps with the faith formation of the children of the St Francis community, both Anglo and migrant. Xochitl ( whose name is usually shortened and pronounced “Soshi”) is in charge of guiding migrant ministry in Ontario and Yates Counties. It’s still the Lenten season, and now we’re gathering in a field in a migrant camp in Avon. Debbie has organized this celebration and has invited the migrant community of Livingston County. We divide into three groups to reflect on the Word of God and to listen to our stories. Later we share our experiences as we present our offerings for the Eucharist. When we finish, Debbie invites the participants to share some food. Meanwhile several young men and women tell me they want me to hear their confessions and to talk with me. It’s 10 PM and I’m still listening to the sufferings, struggles, and concerns of the brave young workers… I feel the force of their faith. Later, during April, the debate over laws affecting migrants intensifies. Every migrant community, as well as every migrant family, nervously follows the course of this debate. When the debate reaches the House of Representatives, we gather together to go out to the streets to demonstrate. We share the position of the Catholic Bishops, in demanding a comprehensive reform of the current immigration laws. Uniting our voices we proclaim, “No human being is ‘illegal.’” Even in this tense atmosphere, with its exaggerated political positions and proposed solutions that are partial and ignore people’s inherent dignity, we continue to believe that the Kingdom of God is becoming a reality, little by little, right here where the most fragile of people welcome the fertile seed of a society more just, more worthy. I invite you to become a part of this mission of welcome as well.
Contrariamente a como lo vivieron los místicos del pasado, “la huida del mundo” no lleva al creyente a ser santificado en la verdad, es la inserción en todas las dimensiones del mundo lo que nos permite vivir lo mas autentico de la fe cristiana.
