SISTER PARISHES

By Fr. James Rude, S.J,

June 06, 2007

 

Throwing a fiver or a five C-note into a collection basket is a generous act of charity.  But it does not quite fulfill the gospel sense of justice.  Justice is not just giving something to someone needy, it is walking with that person, coming to know that person and exchanging gifts with that person, giving as well as receiving.

 

That is why I am so delighted with what two parishes have done, similar but very different.  One in San Francisco, the other in LA.

 

The parish in San Francisco has a connection with two parishes in El Salvador, Parroquia San Antonio in the town of Soyapango near the capital San Salvador and El Carmen, a rural parish about 50 miles from Soyapango which lost about 3000 homes in earthquakes in 2001.  The Oscar Romero Foundation (named for the martyr-bishop of San Salvador) arranged for a visit in order to deliver to the Sanvadoreans some earthquake relief supplies.  But they found good people and developed a sense of solidarity between them.

 

The group in San Francisco takes up collections to send south, but also each year the pastor and a number of the parishioners themselves go to Central America to meet and talk and work with their Salvadorean buddies.  They stay only a couple of weeks but it is enough to develop and deepen friendships—and you have to remember that the word ‘friend’ comes from an Anglo-Saxon word that means ‘love.’  This follows neatly Jesus’ request that we come to love our neighbors, our brothers and sisters.

 

It is amazing to realize that our people receive as much as they give.  Not monetarily, but not everything can be valued in dollar signs.  They come to understand their lives and loves and hardships; they are able to laugh with them and cry with them.  And when they come back to the Bay Area they pass their information and their experiences to family, friends and parishioners, and so that circle grows.  It grows enough so that the following years even more want to go to Salvador to meet and to grow.  As the parish has said, “[W]e all grow in  understanding, compassion, tolerance and faith....by spending time with our friends in Soyapango,...we can begin to see more clearly those things in life that are really important and those that are not.”

 

It was never a question of charity, of the haves and the have-nots; it was a question of different peoples coming together and learning about each other, their cultures and their backgrounds.  Letter by letter, person by person, the parishes became family.

 

The LA parish was also pulled into Central America because of the earthquakes.  Two members of the parish went south to a group of twenty-two devastated communities in El Salvador called Las Delicias; they brought with them monetary aid, clothing and emergency materials.  Because of their own poverty, however, they have finally responded in a different way.

 

They created a Solidarity Committee, which involves the parish but also other neighboring areas and communities in Los Angeles.   Their goal spring from a sense of solidarity, which leads them to respond to their needs, but also contributes to the building of a better model of society.  Even though they have answered the call to help their brothers and sisters in Las Delicias, and also others at Tecate in Baja California, and even earthquake victims in Peru and India, they are more concerned with structural change.  They respond to short-term emergency needs of a community but more important, they deal with long-term needs with strategic plans that involve development projects that are both economical and educational.

They don’t just give and move on, they walk in the shoes of the other.  It’s not just charity, it becomes justice.  And little by little Jesus’ wish that we all become one flock under one shepherd is being fulfilled.  For Central Americans are not just “brothers and sisters”.  They are truly our brothers and sisters.  Remember: Jesus’ goal is that we become one.