A Chilean songwriter, Nano Stern, describes the land of Latin America as a feast of colors. It is a beautiful image that reminds us of what our missionaries have encountered and encounter every day for going on thirty years of mission in this part of the world. There are colors that are striking, surprising and, at times, concerning. Latin America, with its limitless horizons that go from the desert to the impetuous waters of the ocean, where the millennial glaciers of Patagonia dive from towering peaks of the Andean Cordillera. Latin America, with its sprawling cities, in which riches and extreme poverty live together but without speaking. Latin America, like the heart of 670 million men and women in the midst of many contradictions who seek every day to find meaning in all of these colors, a meaning that can go beyond the fears due to insecurity, violence, boredom, consumerism, and human poverty.
Surely, when the first Jesuits and Franciscans arrived in the south of Chile, the reality was much different. Yet, the strength of their announcement pushed them to build majestic churches that served as a refuge for all those who, after having crossed land and sea, approached with the hope of receiving a visit with these missionaries. These churches, whose beauty has made them a Patrimony of Humanity, were born from a singular and great initiative: to bring Chrust in those places where, as John Paul II said during his visit to Chile, one can live the same experience that Jesus did: a new life among the fishermen.
We missionaries of St. Charles have inserted ourselves into the furrow of this history that has preceded us.
We missionaries of St. Charles have inserted ourselves into the furrow of this history that has preceded us and that for more than 500 years has not tired of announcing and introducing others to Christ, the only great artist capable of gathering into unity all the myriad of colors, light and shadows to make of them a masterpiece. Again it was John Paul II who, speaking in Mexico in 1979, said that the Church in Latin America “must be a sign of unity in the midst of many tensions”” this is what we have seen for many years and still see. I think of the persons whom I encounter who in the encounter with the Movement of Communion and Liberation have been able to truly connect with others, overcoming social barriers. I think of the many Chilean youngsters who have begun to love their barrio, their history, even to the point of forgiving their own violent or absent father after having tasted the joy of encountering the One Father. I think of the poor who, having been taken off the street, were accompanied to die in one of the best clinics in Paraguay which was born from our own Fr. Aldo Trento. I think of our missionaries in Bogota, who enter into a pagan and secular world of the public and private universities, meeting young people and professors of even background, creed and ideology.
The Latin American people are a people who scream to be seen by God.
In every way, it is difficult to describe the cultural and social particularities of the heart of the persons we encounter, even more in this moment in which peoples have been mixed together in an ever-increasing homogenous mass, which is spurred on by social media. Nevertheless, there is something that cannot leave us indifferent: a great religiosity that is expressed in a desire to be blessed. All want to be blessed and want everything to be blessed. It is a people who scream to be looked at by God. It is a people who seeks the love of the father, of whom, unfortunately, it does not know the traces. But it is precisely this thirst and this cry that make this earth fertile, capable of recognizing in an instant even the smallest sign of that Love that awaits and that immediately and simply, embraces them. The most beautiful thing for us missionaries of South America is learning, little by little, to live this same gaze, that helps us to rediscover every day the beauty and the greatness of the Grace that we carry.
