Endings and Beginnings. Relinquishing Everything. Advent. November 26, 2018

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1 November 26, 2018 Endings and Beginnings Yesterday was the Feast of Christ the King, which marks the end of the current liturgical year. Next Sunday we begin a new liturgical year with the First Sunday of Advent. Fr. Frank, a diocesan priest of Connecticut was the celebrant at yesterday s Eucharist. He comes to Haiti many times a year. We pulled in the sisters at the same time. I introduced Louise to Fr. Frank before we entered the chapel. After Mass he told me about the violence he had witnessed on Friday in Delmas, 60, near a Catholic church where he has an office. He said the protestors tried to set four gas stations on fire. But the police did good job of stopping them without responding with brute force or gunfire. A protestor threw a Molotov cocktail at a police office. The leg of his pants caught fire, which, mercifully, was quickly extinguished. One of the sisters asked Fr. Frank if he could say Mass today. He said he wasn t sure as the protests where schedule to resume on Monday morning for three additional days. This disturbing news as Louise travels to Miami on Tuesday and I fly to Ft. Lauderdale on Wednesday. As we were leaving the chapel, Sr. Franceska motioned for me to bring Louise back to speak with her. Sister is from a part of Belgium where Flemish is spoken. Louise was surprised how fluent Sister s Flemish still was. In a it s a small world, moment it turns out that Sister once spent ten days in the town in the Netherlands where Louise was born. At the time, Sister Franceska was a member of a religious order of sisters who were medical missionaries. As a teenage girl, Louise was attracted to those sisters because they played soccer in their habits. Louise and Sister had a long and pleasant conversation. It was nice to see. Relinquishing Everything Matthew s Gospel reminds us that to serve Christ the King is to serve the least of our sisters and brothers. But Jesus is not merely suggesting that we be charitable. Hardly. Jesus is asking us to abandon our love of self and to embrace our own weakness and vulnerability. Jesus is saying we cannot enter into the universe of God without relinquishing everything that binds us to the false security of our own imagined self-sufficiency. God desires (and maybe even requires) absolute allegiance. Jesus is asking us to give ourselves entirely over to him every day of our lives. And this we find terrifying. Advent The following comes from my Haiti Journal and was published on November 24, Advent helps us see the need to pause and contemplate the deep and magnificent meaning of the Incarnation: that God, in a supreme act of Self-emptying love, became poor for us, entering fully into our flawed humanity in order that we could have the chance to enter more fully into God s perfect divinity. The primary motivation for God s incarnation is God s goodness, not human sinfulness. The Incarnation is a dynamic expression of God s overflowing love and mercy, as well as a revelation of God s poverty and humility. Through the Incarnation we find redemption and

2 completion, making it the heart of all reality. Christmas is a time for us to see more clearly our own poverty and weakness in order to better receive the gift of God s transforming love. Advent is a time for us to emulate, as best we can, God s love and goodness by sharing the mercy and compassion we have experienced through our lived experience of Christ s birth in the stable of our humble hearts. In the slums of Haiti, I m stripped bare of all pretentions, all sense of superiority. And I stand in the midst of the swirling, turbulent world of overwhelming want, feeling the pain and not knowing how to respond. But God says let my eyes, my hands, my mouth become your eyes, your hands, your mouth. With my mouth, give a smile to each sad face. To the person who has become hardened and hopeless, give them my heart. This is what we try to do at Santa Chiara. This is the real gift of Christmas: the heart of God born afresh within each of us. As The Song of Zechariah says: In the tender compassion of God the dawn from on high shall break upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace. During these troubled times in Haiti, in America, and around the world, Advent helps us look to the future with hope. But, we cannot hope for a better future and remain indifferent to the suffering that currently surrounds us, otherwise Christian hope is little more than pious escapism. We must act. Human goodness aided by divine help can overcome the dark forces that are holding so many people in a lethal bondage of poverty. In light of the miracle of Christmas, we must become candles of hope, shinning incarnate light on a world and a Church lost often in the dark. Because of the Incarnation, everything is now graced. Every breath we take matters. Every life matters because every life contains divine potential. God is aware of every tear, every heartache, and every physical and emotional wound. God, a beggar of love, is waiting to transform our lives. Prepare the way for that to happen in your heart. I think is will be the 5 th Advent I ve spent in Haiti. The Chairman Mr. Makenson saw how easily all the cheap plastic chairs we buy for the older kids and the staff break. Even the more expensive chairs can t hold up with all these kids. So, Mr. Makenson decided to design and build a wooden chair that will be hard to break. I could barely lift the chair. Photos on the next two pages.

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4 Bowling with Madame Louise Louise invented a game for the kids to play. She took old water bottles and pretended they were bowling pins. She took an old tennis ball (which I brought home from Georgia in hopes Giles would fetch it, but he seemed afraid of the ball) and imagined it was a bowling ball.

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7 Sunday Portraits

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10 Cici, one our staff member who cares for the toddlers.