“Sentir con la Iglesia”: On Pilgrimage in El Salvador

As some of you know, Sister Jeanne Nisley and I recently represented our congregation on a delegation that traveled to El Salvador from November 30 to December 6. Along with Sister Marie Lucey, who represented LCWR as its Associate Director for Social Mission, we journeyed with approximately 120 other pilgrims to commemorate and honor the four Church women who were martyred on December 2, 1980. Marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of their deaths was a profound privilege for each of who formed this delegation co-sponsored by LCWR and the SHARE Foundation. For those of us unfamiliar with SHARE, it is an international non-profit organization that accompanies poor communities in El Salvador as they work for economic justice, democracy and sustainable development alternatives at the local and national levels.

In the country for just under a week, we were, nevertheless, blessed to visit the sites, not only where the four women were assassinated in San Pedro Nonualco, but also the places of the martyrdom of Archbishop Romero in the Chapel at Divina Providencia Hospital, as well as that of the six Jesuits and their two housekeepers at the University of Central America. Each of these experiences concretized for us the cost of discipleship: the ultimate price one is impelled to pay if, as Archbishop Romeo’s motto expressed, one decides truly “to feel with the Church,” that is, to stand in compassion with the suffering poor, the marginal and the disenfranchised.

Although I was happy to come home, in returning to the United States—to the December cold and to the pervasive Christmas shopping frenzy—I sensed almost an estrangement from myself and from my surroundings. However, as I reflected on this disconnect, I realized that I had come back home from what felt very little like Advent and much more like a Triduum experience of witnessing the Paschal Mystery incarnated again in the people of El Salvador and that I, too, had been graced to know, in some small measure, what it was like “to feel with the Church.”

I felt with Santana, a proud, hard-working woman in the Bajo Lempa whom we visited on Friday. Along with other women, she forms a cooperative of farmers who work a Humidity Cultivation Project supported by SHARE. Just when their first crop of white beans and corn was ready to be harvested, Hurricane Stan destroyed it all. When we visited their field, they had plowed and replanted—all by hand—and were waiting patiently for another harvest so that they will have some of what they need to provide nutrition for their families and for the cattle which they fatten and sell at market.

Standing in this muddy field, I felt with Santana’s helplessness in the presence of forces, both natural and human, that were beyond her control. And, in my own heart, asked to be graced with some small measure of her ability to continue to trust God’s providence even when confronted with situations which appear so futile and fruitless.

I felt with Doris, the leader of a group of courageous women who are working to better the lives of women in Chalchuapa. On Saturday, as we sat among these women in Doris’ back yard, we listened to them recount their efforts to create a platform for upcoming municipal elections and for doing advocacy around that platform. We heard stories from women just beginning “to wake up” after years of oppression and domestic abuse and finding their voice through leadership, advocacy and gender focus trainings supported by SHARE.

In this abandoned spot where there is no water and no source of water, where women and children must pick 25 pounds of coffee beans to earn 65 cents, I felt with Doris’ determination to accomplish the goals of their platform, among these being the acquisition of the rights and the monies to dig a well. And, in my own heart, I asked to be graced with knowing, as Doris did, the Source of Living Water from whom she continues to draw strength and courage.

I felt with Marcelina, an 82 year old widow who lives in Mano de León, one of the many communities struggling to stop the construction of a beltway that will circle the capital city of San Salvador. Precipitated by the ratification of CAFTA, this superhighway, called Plan Puebla Panamá (PPP) will benefit large corporations and, in its wake, will destroy communities and displace families, like Marcelina’s who has lived on this land her entire life.

That Sunday, against the grinding sound of the bulldozers working in the valley below her home, we sat in her outdoor kitchen and listened while she narrated the experience of being scammed into signing the authorization for engineers working on the PPP to survey her property. We learned from her neighbor, Rosario, of SHARE’s support of the efforts of the Association of Communities Affected by the Super Highway and Bypass (ACAP). This small grassroots organization is made up of residents living in the proposed path of the beltway, and they are organizing in order to give community residents a stronger voice in this struggle.

In this now deforested dust bowl where we could hardly breathe, I felt with Marcelina’s guilt and grief at the probability of losing the only home she had ever known. And, in my own heart, I begged to be graced with some small measure of the hope and hospitality this “Martha” continued to offer to those who came to her table.

On the walk back to our van, we were accompanied by Juan José, another of Marcelina’s neighbors. He asked us to sit down for another little while because he wanted to speak to us. He narrated his experience of personally knowing both Archbishop Romero and the four Churchwomen. He spoke almost matter-of-factly of being tortured in Chalatenango during the war and of his disappointment with some in the current hierarchical Church who have aligned themselves with the nation’s political and military powers. But his wise and knowing eyes sparkled when he spoke of “Monsign?or” Romero. “I am 75 years old,” he said, but when I remember ‘Monsign?or’ Romero, I am young again in my heart.” And he was young again and Romero’s spirit was alive again.

Then, I knew what Romero meant when he took as his motto, “Sentir con la Iglesia” (To feel with the Church) because I felt the real Church alive in Juan José, in Marcelina, in Doris, and in Santana. At the end of my El Salvador Triduum, I felt Jesus risen again in the spirit of all the martyrs of El Salvador—over 75,000 of them, murdered and disappeared—whose names are engraved on the Monument to Memory and Truth constructed to honor the Civil War’s civilian dead.

This Monument, so like the Viet-Nam Memorial wall in Washington, had been the first stop on our pilgrimage and, in my heart, I visited it again as our van pulled away with Juan José continuing to wave us on our journey. And I could hear again the words of José Artiga, Executive Director of SHARE, who spoke to us at the Monument and who had himself narrowly escaped the work of the death squads during the war: “Do justice until your feel uncomfortable.”

And now, back home, I ask myself: What is the place of stretch for me, that “graced margin” between feeling comfortable and uncomfortable? What is the cost of discipleship that I am willing to “pay” so that, in my small corner of this world, I can again let my heart be softened enough “to feel with the Church”? How is God calling me again to ongoing conversion of heart: to incarnate in my life the Paschal Experience of Jesus?

Somehow, the answer to each of these—for me and perhaps for you—lies in the words of Monsign?or Gregorio Rosa y Chavez, Auxiliary Bishop of San Salvador, a man who lives in the spirit of Romero and who spoke with us on the final day of our pilgrimage: “Only tenderness can change our world. Only tenderness offers hope. Hope has a name and the name is Jesus Christ.”

As this New Year begins, I pray for myself, for us, and for the people of El Salvador: may we be strengthened in tenderness and learn again how “to feel with the Church.”