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| Quechua woman - Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica |
It is impossible, I think, taking our nature into consideration, that anyone who fails to realize that he or she is favored by God should have the courage necessary for doing great things.
St. Teresa of Avila
Last year our friend Ralie
introduced me to an author I haven’t known before, Gregory Boyle. He is a
Jesuit priest who has been working under the gangs of Los Angeles for more than
20 years. In his book Tattoos on the Heart
he recollects some of his experiences and the people he got to know and love.
Here at the beginning of 2015 I
want to post an excerpt from the book that deals with an episode in his life
while still a very young priest, before his work in Los Angeles.
Shortly after I was ordained, I spent a year in Cochabamba, Bolivia. It
was a gracious time that changed me forever. My Spanish was quite poor, and the
year was to be filled with language study and ministry. I could celebrate the
Eucharist in Spanish (after a summer at Dolores Mission), but I was a slave to
the missal for some time to come. Early on, I began to minister to a community
named Temporal, which had been without a priest for a long time. A few weeks
into my time there, I was approached by a group of health workers who asked me
to celebrate Mass in Tirani. This was a Quechua community located high above
Cochabamba, whose indigenous folks harvested flowers for market. It was common
to see campesinos making the long trek from Tirani with a huge weight of
flowers tied to their backs. Like beasts of burden, they were doubled over all
the way to town.
The health workers explain that the Quechua Indians in Tirani have not
seen a priest in a decade, so they ask me to celebrate the Mass in Spanish, and
one of the workers would preach in Quechua. (Everyone there speaks Quechua,
with only the men able to defend themselves in Spanish.) The workers pick me up
at the bottom of the hill at one o’clock on a Sunday afternoon. I hop into the
back of the open-air truck with the others, and we climb to the top of the
mountain. Midtrek, I decide to do an inventory of the contents of my backpack.
I have brought everything I need but a missalette. I have not the words. At
this point in my early priesthood, I could wing Mass in English. The thought of
doing so in Spanish was preposterous. I do have a Spanish Bible, so I
frantically flip through the pages, trying to find any passages that sound like
the words of consecration, “Take this and eat.”
I locate any part of the New Testament that has Jesus kicking it at a
table and eating. Soon, my body is introducing me to the marvels of flop sweat
– and I haven’t even arrived at Tirani yet. I am red in the face and stingy
hot.
We pull into a huge, open-air landing, a field cleared of all crops,
and many hundreds of Quechua Indians have gathered and set themselves down
around this table, our altar. I hobble and fake my way through the liturgy of
the Word, aided by the health workers, who read everything in Quechua. After
the gentleman preaches, it is my turn to carry the ball. I’m like someone who’s
been in a major car accident. I can’t remember a thing.
I know only that I have a crib sheet with some notes I have made, with
stolen scriptural quotations, all the while lifting the bread and wine whenever
I run out of things to say. It would be hard to imagine this Mass going worse.
When it is over, I am left spent and humiliated. I am wandering adrift,
trying to gather my shattered self back together again, when a female health
worker walks an ancient Quechua woman up to me.
“She hasn’t gone to confession in ten years.”
She leaves her with me, and the viejita unloads a decade’s worth of
sins in a singsongy and rapid-fire Quechua. I just nod like a menso waiting for
a pause that might indicate she’s finished. The woman’s got some pulmones on
her and doesn’t seem to need to take a breath. She goes on for about a half
hour. Finally she does stop, and I manage to communicate some penance and give
her my memorized absolution. She walks away, and I turn to discover that I have
been abandoned. The field where we celebrated Mass has been vacated.
Inexplicably, even the truck and the health workers are gone. I am alone at the
top of this mountain, stuck, not only without a ride, but in stultifying
humiliation. I am convinced that a worse priest has never visited this place or
walked this earth.
With my backpack snug on my shoulder and spirit deflated, I begin to
make the long walk down the mountain and back to town. But before I leave the
makeshift soccer field that had been our cathedral, an old Quechua campesino,
seemingly out of nowhere, makes his way to me. He appears ancient, but I
suspect his body has been weathered by work and the burden of an Indian’s life.
As he nears me, I see he is wearing tethered wool pants, with a white buttoned
shirt, greatly frayed at the collar. He has a rope for a belt. His suit coat is
coarse and worn. He has a fedora, toughened by the years. He is wearing huaraches,
and his feet are caked with Bolivian mud. Any place that a human face can have wrinkles
and creases, he has them. He is at least a foot shorter than I am, and he
stands right in front of me and says, “Tatai.”
This is Quechua for Padrecito, a word packed with carino, affection,
and a charming intimacy. He looks up at me, with penetrating, weary eyes and
says, “Tatai, gracias por haber venido” (Thanks for coming).
I think of something to say, but nothing comes to me. Which is just as
well, because before I can speak, the old campesino reaches into the pockets of
his suit coat and retrieves two fistfuls of multicolored rose petals. He’s on
the tips of his toes and gestures that I might assist with the inclination of
my head. And so he drops the petals over my head, and I’m without words. He
digs into his pockets again and manages two more fistfuls of petals. He does
this again and again, and the store of red, pink and yellow rose petals seems
infinite. I just stand there and let him do this, staring at my own huaraches,
now moistened with my tears, covered with rose petals. Finally, he takes his
leave and I’m left there, alone, with only the bright aroma of roses.
For all the times I would return to Tirani and see the same villagers,
over and over, I never saw this old campesino again.
God, I guess, is more expansive than every image we think rhymes with
God. How much greater is the God we have than the one we think we have. More
than anything else, the truth of God seems to be about a joy that is a foreigner
to disappointment and disapproval. This joy just doesn’t know what we’re
talking about when we focus on the restriction of not measuring up… The God,
who is greater than God, has only one thing on Her mind, and that is to drop,
endlessly, rose petals on our heads.
Our wish is
that you may experience and know this God this coming year. And if you do not
know Her the rose petal-way, that you will somehow be introduced.
George
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