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Pastoral Message – June 30, 2024

Pastoral Message – June 30, 2024

As Christians, service towards the poor is our gospel! When we pass from this Earthly life into life eternal with God, Jesus will ask us how we’ve helped the poor and shown compassion for those in need. Christ identifies himself as these people! On our mission trip to Ensenada, Mexico, about twenty members of our parish served as Christ’s hands and feet. To me, the service felt holistic. Our group, representing Saints Simon & Jude, cared for the whole person. We can think of mission work of this sort as restoring dignity to people who felt they lost it in their life circumstances. Just to name a few places, we visited rehab centers, an orphanage, and a juvy. All of these places SSJ parishioners made and distributed sandwiches and then listened to the stories of those whom we were serving.

There was something really special about what we did as a parish group because we didn’t just distribute food and then leave. No, we talked to people we served, sometimes with the help of translators. So many of the stories were moving and so many involved abandonment, fidelity to faith, or maybe even a struggling faith. But we were able to listen and accompany them in a way that felt profoundly Christian in a way that responds to Christ’s call to serve, in a way that was deeply human too. Those on the periphery of society tend to not have a voice at all and their cries for help many times are met with deaf ears. Local people that do help are met with so many obstacles because their resources are so finite and limited. But our trip provided a chance for some to be heard; at the conclusion of every conversation we would ask if they wanted to be prayed for and for what and we did exactly that.

There was an immense realization for me what our service meant, which was restoring justice. In one sense, the physical needs of those we helped were met but in another sense, everyone had the opportunity to witness Christ’s profound work for the people of Ensenada by watching humanity being restored. In other words, perhaps for the first time in a long time, people were treated as people. God’s image in other people came back to life. And this is what service means too, to help people remember that they bear God’s image too and are loved and are deserving of dignity. This is why we don’t simply hand out food but also try to care for the whole person.

I’ve only been here at SSJ as the seminarian intern for a few weeks but I’ve had the chance to see so many different facets of the community here. I had the chance to watch as members of the community came together for this trip to serve one common purpose: serve Christ of the poor in Mexico. There was a deep sense of friendship among the group because service was our foundation. And when our service officially “ended” we ended our trip with a couple tourist excursions, including one to the beach.

Seminarian Seth London
(Seth is a seminarian with the Diocese of Orange, currently assigned to SSJ for the summer.)

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