A Late-Night Meeting

As director of mission advancement for our province, I have the privilege of making an annual visit to one of our missions in other countries. In December I was in Guatemala. I’ve been trying hard to improve my Spanish, but after all my efforts I still know only enough to be dangerous.

One evening I was paying a visit to Fr. Marco Antonio Lopez Gonzalez, C.PP.S., who is the pastor of Santa Rosita parish in Guatemala City. As is typical in Latin America, the parish is huge, serving 40,000 people who worship in the main church and at five smaller chapels in surrounding areas. Over dinner, Fr. Marco Antonio was talking about his exhausting schedule. He mentioned that he was going to attend a 7 p.m. prayer meeting and then a 9 p.m. meeting at a parishioner’s home. With my limited Spanish I thought he was asking me to come along, and I agreed, though a little reluctantly as it had already been a long day.

Later, I accompanied him through the dark streets to the home where the 9 p.m. meeting was to be held. There, with about 20 parishioners of all ages, we shared a meal (I had wondered earlier why Fr. Marco Antonio had eaten such a light dinner) and sat through a two-hour discussion about an upcoming parish celebration.

I later learned that Fr. Marco Antonio had not expected me to come to the meeting with him – he had been politely informing me about his own schedule. He was probably shocked when I said I wanted to come along!

We laughed about the misunderstanding, but now I’m glad I went. Even though I didn’t understand all of the discussion at the meeting, the rhythm of parish life was familiar to me. The people had an idea that they wanted to run past Father, and everybody was willing to pitch in to make it come to life.

You can get to know a little about another of our Precious Blood parishes in Guatemala, Santa Catalina in La Tinta, in the cover story of this issue. You’ll see that although the structure and the outreach of that parish may be very different from your own, the people of Santa Catalina share the same commitment to their faith and their church family. As you read the story I hope you’ll be able to make connections between parish life at La Tinta and parish life as you experience it – and feel as I do the wonder of God’s endless creativity, as manifested in God’s people.