“…one Lord,
one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all…” (Ephesians 4:5-6a)
After being away for some weeks of rest,
I returned to the parish on Saturday to greet a missionary priest who was
visiting us from South Sudan. He was going to speak at all our Masses to
appeal for the people of a war-ravaged nation. Father Abraham was sent by
his bishop to the United States to ask for monetary help and prayers. I
prided myself back in middle school on being a geography buff but since I had
forgotten that Sudan is a country located south of Egypt and west of Ethiopia where
the Nile River flows down from the Mediterranean. It is a country that
has been in and out of war since ceasing to be a British colony in 1956 and
went through a long and bitter war between the 1980s and the 2000s that killed roughly
2.2 million people. Early last year, the people of South Sudan voted
overwhelmingly to secede from Sudan and form their own country mainly because
the north is dominated by Arabs and Muslims and the south is populated by
animists and Christians. Yet, as Father Abraham, reminded us, the
Christians are under constant attack by Muslim Extremists. There is very
little infrastructure in his country, the drought that has been plaguing
Ethiopia and the horn of Africa have affected them as well, and in light of all
this suffering and violence, they continue to preach the Good News of Jesus
Christ. Whenever a brother priest comes from anywhere in the world to
plea for his people, I welcome him with open arms. We share the same
priesthood, we celebrate the same Eucharist, but the people we minister to are
so different and are suffering though things that we will hopefully never
experience in this country. Many in his flock not only have to worry
about what they are going to eat, but they sometimes fear for their lives when
they gather around the altar of the Lord to worship. If poverty and war
isn’t enough, Father Abraham told us that over 70% of his people were infected
with the HIV virus. Yet, there he was this morning, in this beautiful
air-conditioned church, bringing the Good News of the Lord and celebrating the
same Mass that his people were celebrating back home. After all, we share
“one faith, one baptism” as St. Paul tells us. This is why we must
constantly be reminded that we belong to a universal Church that confronts so
many challenges around the world.
After Mass last night, I took Father
Abraham and Father Eliseus, the Nigerian priest that is helping us this summer,
out to dinner. They sat across from me and I heard them compare stories
about how the people in both their countries are being threatened because of
their faith. People are fearful in Nigeria and South Sudan and countless
other countries when they go to Mass to worship the Lord, and yet we complain
here when the air conditioner isn’t working correctly. In Nigeria last
Christmas, many Christians were killed in their churches simply for being
Christian. Buses are stopped randomly and people are gunned down simply
for being Christian. Imagine going to church, the safest and most sacred
place you can possibly think of, and worrying if you’re going to make it home
alive. This is the reality that this good priest came to share with us
today. Despite the darkness that
surrounds his people, they still believe in a God who loves them to no end and
feeds them at this altar. In today’s
gospel, people ate in peace with the Lord who fed them in the same way that he
will feed in a few moments. Pray for my brother priest Father Abraham and
pray that our brothers and sisters in South Sudan may be able to gather around
the table of the Lord to be fed and to worship their God in peace.
To read more about South Sudan, click on
this recent and illuminating article from the New York Times:
To donate to Catholic Relief Services mission
in South Sudan, click here: http://crs.org/countries/south-sudan
(Be sure your donation is for South Sudan.)
