Dear Friends,
On this weekend when many people are celebrating Valentine’s Day, I am on a quick trip (I will be back on Monday) to Guatemala to meet with the Huehuetenango leadership team to do planning for our summer mission trip and to do a bit of long range planning. A group of leaders for Ixim from Omaha are joining me for these planning meetings. While it is not a normal way of celebrating Valentine’s Day, I do think that our meeting with our Guatemalan partners is a way of saying that we love one another.
Our Ixim project of being sister dioceses began officially in 2004 and has involved hundreds of people from the Omaha area. Lives throughout the diocese of Huehuetenango have been changed because of the partnership. Thousands of families in Guatemala now have clean water to drink because of the efforts of people in Omaha. The sister diocese idea grew from a challenge by Pope John Paul who was responding to a synod of bishops held twenty years ago. The Pope wanted to build up relationships of solidarity between the Catholic Church in North America and the Church in Central and South America.
As the Bishops of the United States have said, “The Catholic community in the United States should be proud of the mission, advocacy, humanitarian relief, and development activities of our Church. U.S. Catholics are generous, active, committed, and concerned. But we must recognize that still too many children die, too many weapons are sold, and too many believers are persecuted.
Through the eyes of faith, the starving child, the believer in jail, and the woman without clean water or health care are not issues, but Jesus in disguise. The human and moral costs of the arms trade, international debt, environmental neglect, and ethnic violence are not abstractions, but tests of our faith. Violence in the Middle East, tribal combat in Africa, religious persecution, and starvation around the world are not just headlines, but a call to action. As Catholics, we are called to renew the earth, not escape its challenge.
Our faith challenges us to reach out to those in need, to take on the global status quo, and to resist the immorality of isolationism. Pope John Paul II reminded us that a turn to ‘selfish isolation’ would not only be a ‘betrayal of humanity’s legitimate expectations . . . but also a real desertion of a moral obligation.’
In one sense, we need to move our Church’s concern from strong teaching to creative action. Working together, we can continue to help missionaries preach the Gospel, empower poor people in their own development, help the Church live and grow in lands marked by repression and poverty, and assist countries emerging from authoritarian rule. We must help reform and increase development assistance, curb the arms trade, ban landmines, relieve debt, and protect human life and human rights…
Across the country parishes are building relationships with sister parishes, especially in Latin America but also in Africa, Eastern Europe, Asia, and Oceania. Parish committees and legislative networks respond to pleas for help and advocate on issues of development, human rights, and peace. Parishes honor the memories of martyrs in Central America and Africa, and they act in defense of the unborn, the hungry, migrants, and refugees. Human rights advocates work for the release of prisoners of conscience and those suffering for their faith. Many parishes work on an ecumenical and interfaith basis to build bridges and act effectively on issues of global solidarity. These commitments transform and enrich U.S. parishes. As bishops, we seek to fan these flames of charity and justice in our parishes, dioceses, and national structures, so that the Church in the United States will be better light for our world. Our international responsibilities enrich parish life and deepen genuine Catholic identity. Integrating themes of solidarity into the routines of parish life will make for a richer, more Catholic experience of Church. In giving a little, we receive much more.”
Please keep our Guatemalan mission and solidarity efforts in your prayers. And, if you want to go on the summer mission trip in June, there is still room!
Peace,
Fr. Damian