From the Pastor - Father Rick Rodoni
Summer Travels
July 11, 2010
As well many of you know, there is a delegation from St. Mary Parish traveling to Quito Ecuador to visit and serve at the Working Boys Center – Centro Muchacho Trabajador. Indeed, by the time you read this we will have already completed our first week immersed in the Ecuadoran cultural.
Some in our group are presently students at junior high and high school level and are traveling along with their parents. Some have graduated and are attending university with the remainder being adults familiar or not with travel to foreign countries. To prepare for this immersion, our travel group met with Sr. Elizabeth Avalos BVM. She asked us about our hopes and expectations. Some did not know what to expect while others were very hopeful to make new friends in a remote land. Each of us were encouraged to be open to how the Spirit is working among us and to pray that our experience will be both spiritual and fruitful for us and those whom we serve.
Many people today from the United States and Europe want to make a connection with people in impoverished nations. Some skeptics argue that this form of travel comes at the expense of impoverished people. Moreover, our demonstrations of wealth within indigent nations only serve to create more greed, corruption, and hopelessness among those who have contact with wealthy outsiders. While this may well be true to some extent, it is not our purpose or intention to further such degradation.
Having traveled in poorer nations, I have become acquainted with people who have very little. Still, these folks share what they have. They understand the religious and spiritual aspects of life though we may differ with them in the way we express it. The richness of their culture is tied to a heritage and land, and the more one can understand their way of life the more one is able to help preserve it for future generations.
We have much to learn from others that live differently from the manner to which we have become accustomed. The western mind tends to think of things practically without consideration for the land or its people. This brought great prosperity and progress to us, but at what cost? The world economy will no doubt continue the course of the rich becoming more wealthy with the poor becoming poorer. If we do not understand what it means to be poor, then we may never understand Matthew 5—the Sermon on the Mount.
So pray for us as we travel that we may find the richness of the gospel in the people we encounter. We may not find answers for alleviating poverty, but we will have enjoyed the fellowship and solidarity of people at the Working Boys Center.
Previous Pastor's Letters can be found in the weekly bulletins
St. Mary’s parish is a community of
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the mysteries of God’s love.
We support and strengthen one another
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We serve those in need
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