Santa Elena

Four of us Missions went into the mountain villages of Santa Elena for a follow up visit with each community. Mission groups during the summer had put on weeklong retreats and helped them start youth groups. We went to follow up with the newly formed youth groups.

el Día Nacional del Maíz

This was the Mass for the Day of Corn festival. I got to join their choir! The priest was a talented conductor.

The hospitality these communities showed us was inspiring. We slept in their chapels where they have a celebration of the Word on Sundays. The delegates representing their towns to the Church in Santa Elena found families to feed us and the communities are so alive that there is always a crowd at our programs. One delegate Don Francisco has been visiting the families in his community and serving their needs for over fifty years. He was on his death bed during the summer when a priest came with one of our mission groups. He gave Don Francisco the Sacrament of Last Rights and the next day he was out of bed for the first time in a week going door to door with the Missioners. When he was younger he would walk four days to go to Mass in El Salvador for

Easter and then walk back. When we drove out of his town he was on the road far from his home with one of his grandchildren visiting his neighbors.

The younger kids playing Red Rover

These mountain villagers are in expectant waiting to hear about Jesus. Life has become real for them because they realize just how much they need the Mystery that is God. Yes, there is great material poverty, but they know who they really are; made for this Other Presence outside of themselves.

I was very humbled by their whole disposition towards life. It reminded me that the core of our being is to be in a relationship with this Other; a relationship with an Infinite God that I can only ever know if He comes to me and shows me how to live by His example in Jesus Christ.

Nothing can substitute this Infinite for my brothers and sisters of Santa Elena, neither success, nor illusions of control, frustrations nor suffering. They want Jesus in their hearts and on their minds, nothing else will profit a man. It was a pleasure to visit them.

24 Then Jesus told his disciples, "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 25 For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. 26 For what will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life? Or what shall a man give in return for his life? 27 For the Son of man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay every man for what he has done.  (Matthew 16:24-27)