Palm Sunday

On our way to the procession

Little Robert Emilio checks out the palms outside his grandma's house

The Liturgy of the Palms

San Andrés celebrated Palm/Passion Sunday with style. We opted to make the procession shorter this year in order for more people to participate, and it worked. Almost 40 people processed down the street fron Niña Romana´s house to the church. The church was packed with 55 people, and the youth did a fabulous job reading the Passion narrative.



The youth of the parish read the Passion gospel

Back to Work...

On my first day back at work, Jacob checks out the librería (bookstore) with new friends Vilma and Lupita

Vilma holds Jacob; Jacob makes me laugh!

We arrived back in El Salvador after spending the last two months of my maternity leave with family in California, and both returned to work, in mid-February. It's been good to be back in El Salvador, and while returning to work has been an adjustment for all of us (Jacob's not to big on Mommy not being around a couple of evenings a week, and since Vince has been working with groups we've had several adventures in tag-team parenting!), it's been wonderful to see Jacob with his many Salvadoran "amigos." He goes to the office with me two days a week, and my staff completely re-arranged my office because they weren't pleased with the placement of his "cunita" (aka playpen)!

I have been thrilled to return to a church and school which are not only still running, but doing better than before I left! A number of physical improvements have been made to the school, the staff re-vamped (both to meet more stringent Ministry of Education standards), and a new, wonderfully dedicated, highly qualified director hired. When I left there were three evening activities a week at the church, and now there are four! Vilma, the lay reader who the bishop put in charge of San Andrés while I was gone, did a fabulous job. We need to pray that she continues to respond to God´s call to ministry, hopefully ordained ministry!


Jacob visits with Don Emilio and Niña Romana;
Jacob gets a hug from Dieguito (below)

Change

The Church must change, not only in order to attract new members and grow, not simply in order to survive as an institution. The Church must embrace change if it is to embrace the mission to which Christ is calling it in the 21^st century: a mission to be Jesus to a world which is increasingly divided, increasingly broken, increasingly secularized, and plummeting semi-obliviously toward disaster. How can we be Jesus’ loving hands (multiplying bread and fish); how can we be his healing presence (casting out demons and raising the dead); how can we live his Paschal Mystery—dying to ourselves and being raised up for others in our world today? A world that, in California, looks like four-lane freeways and identical shopping outlets; tucked-away migrant labor camps and lonely oncology wards? A world that, in San Salvador, looks like bright children with an uncertain future, unwieldy bureaucracies top-heavy with corrupt officials, the price of beans and corn doubling so people can eat half as much, a dozen young lives a day cut off by uncaring violence, families on two sides of a wall that prevents them from seeing each other, maybe ever again?

I don’t have a strategy or technique for being Jesus in the middle of all of this. I know that it is important to keep love several blocks ahead of fear. I know accompaniment is key—it’s important just to be there with people; to show up. And I know that mission is about transformation—of the world in Christ’s image, yes, but first and foremost, of ourselves. It won’t happen by sitting still. That transformation-that-is-mission happens when we allow ourselves to be turned inside-out by others’ reality, which we come to realize is our reality too. Then, there is true solidarity: we stand together. Then we can start to talk about change in the world, together, because we ourselves have been changed.

Change is terrifying to most human beings. Yet change is also the most organic, natural thing in the world. Our bodies’ cells are constantly changing themselves, being renewed and transformed every minute; if they weren’t, we’d be dead. Change can be drastic and sudden, or gradual, but it is never total—we always bring something of the old with us, even if it’s only in the imprints of our hearts and minds, in the shaping of who we are. Change is life. To be open to change is to be open to the work of the Holy Spirit. Ultimately, it is she who will breathe into us the power to be Jesus to the world. -Amy+