Lima, Peru
My turn rolled around again to provide the devotional/prayer for our
staff meeting, so I prepared the following as an outline (in its
written form below):
Just after Thanksgiving, in 1990, I was
part of a work mission to Lima, Peru. I was a senior in High School,
the Reds had just won the World Series – for you Cubs fans, I’ll
explain what winning a World Series is later – and I was living a
pretty comfortable life. It wasn’t much by a lot of standards: I grew
up in a single parent household with a mom who had to work a lot of
hours to make ends meet, and yet I was never really wanting for
anything either. My “burden” – if you will – was that maybe I got less
expensive clothes and shoes than my friends, didn’t have such elaborate
birthdays or Christmas morning wasn’t going to see hundreds of dollars
worth of toys under the tree. Growing up I still had a bike, plenty of
baseball cards and comic books, and lots of the other material
trappings of childhood. Maybe we weren’t as well off as my friend
Richard Kornilack (after all, his father owned a Delorian, like the car
in the movie Back to the Future), but things weren’t bad either.
In
Lima, I saw just how “not bad” things were for me, and – in reality –
for anyone living in the United States. There were whole hill sides
covered in small Mat Huts, so named because they were literally homes
made by propping four straw mats together, with a fifth mat to provide
the roof. Rice – an American side dish or the base of my frequent
Chinese carryout – served as three meals a day for some. The difference
between lower-middle class in the US and the conditions in most of Peru
were stark, and I realized even a relatively poor kid in Hamilton, Ohio
lived like a king compared to many people in the world.
When we
returned from the trip, it was just a few days before my 18th birthday.
My grandfather had purchased and installed a new radio and tape deck in
the car I had (what had just a few weeks earlier been “just a used car”
when compared to some of the cars other people at school drove). They
took me out to the car after we got home from the airport, and when I
turned it on, a tape recording of my mom and grandfather singing happy
birthday came on. I wept; the full weight of my blessings suddenly so
obvious. It’s a lesson I do well to remember from time to time.
Everything
we have is a blessing from God. The question for us in such a rich
country is whether those blessings are a help or a hindrance in our
relationship to Him. St. Rose of Lima has an “optional” memorial today,
August 23rd. But as I contemplated her story, and the story of our
selves, our families, our parish, I couldn’t help but see her example
as one that ties so strongly into the concept of stewardship.
Stewardship
is seen, I think, as a gimmick or a code word for raising money and
getting more “stuff” for the Church: money, items donated, people’s
time, volunteers, whatever. The reality is this: stewardship is a
conversion of our hearts, to the point where we can look at our homes,
our cars, our other material blessings as wonderful things that we can
utilize toward a higher goal. Stewardship is breaking the hold of the
things that easily distract us and can even become idols in our lives.
Our
modern example of this was Mother Teresa, but 400 years or so before
her, came St. Rose. We may not each be called to give up everything we
have (though some of us certainly are), but we are – at the very least
– called to keep our material blessings in context. Our freedom of
time, our ability to accomplish certain things, and the monetary
resources we are given, can all be wonderful tools, as long as we keep
them in their proper place.
St. Rose of Lima
Memorial, August 23rd
Rose
de Flores was born in Lima, Peru in 1586. Her given name was Isabel,
but she was known as Rose because of her great beauty. She objected
when people paid attention to her beauty because she found their praise
and attention to be obstacles to humility. She is even said to have
rubbed her face with pepper to produce blotches, scars, and
discoloration of her skin to lessen her beauty, and she cut her hair
short in an attempt to be less noticed.
Rose wanted to enter a
convent, but her family refused to allow it. Instead, she lived in a
small enclosure in her family’s garden, doing needlework to earn money
for her family. Eventually, she was permitted to become a part of the
Third Order of Saint Dominic. During the final three years of her short
life, Rose lived in the house of a government official where she set up
a room to care for homeless children, the elderly, and the sick. At the
age of 31, Rose died. The city of Lima marked her passing with a
heroine’s funeral in which prominent men of the city took turns
carrying her coffin.
Rose wrote: “The Lord our savior lifted up
His voice and said with unparalleled majesty: ‘All must understand that
grace comes only after tribulation. They must realize that without the
weight of afflictions they cannot reach the heights of grace…without
the cross they cannot find the path to attain heaven.”
Her
spiritual focus was to attain inner purity, and to banish self-love so
that she might be filled with the love of Christ. She attempted to live
out St. Paul’s words in 1 Cor 1:28-30: “God chose the world’s lowborn
and despised - those who count for nothing - to reduce to nothing those
who were something; so that mankind can do no boasting before God. God
it is who has given you life in Jesus Christ.”
In the Gospel of
St. John (Chapter 1, verse 35), Jesus asks the two disciples, “What are
you looking for?” If Jesus were to ask us that, what would we answer?
Would we be embarrassed by our answer? Are we looking for – or seeking
– material goods or are we more concerned with seeking God?
Too
often, we look for material prosperity, even though true happiness
comes not from material goods but from spiritual riches. We look for
security, even though the best things God gives us are often the
surprises in life. We look for understanding, acceptance, and closeness
from others, even though our impatient hearts remain restless until
they rest in God. We look for physical health and fitness, even though
eternity hangs on the wellness of our souls, not our bodies. We look
for and long for good things of this life, even though the things that
will not fade or be corrupted are the eternal things of God.
St.
Rose of Lima dedicated her life to minimizing the effects of material
goods, the security of family, and the short-term happiness that comes
from the compliments of others. She focused instead on the things that
would see her through eternity: generosity, empathy, spiritual
wellness, and a devotion to God that was self-sacrificing. And so we
pray that we too may seek things of an eternal nature:
“O God,
you filled St. Rose with love for You, and enabled her to leave the
world and be free for You, through the austerity of penance. Through
her intercession, help us to follow in her footsteps on earth, and
enjoy the torrent of Your delights in heaven.”
esw - September 2005