A God of Many Nations
On the evening of December 12, 2017 my wife and I approached Saint Peter’s Square from the east without expectations. We were heading back to our hotel nearby with no intention of visiting the Vatican that day. We hoped for a quick rest before finding some dinner. To our surprise a large line had formed in the square patiently waiting to get into the basilica. The line was much larger then lines I had seen during the summer of a prior visit. We knew something must be happening so we jumped in line without ever going to the hotel.
Lucky for us we struck up a long conversation with the two nuns in front of us who just so happened to have two extra tickets that were given out for free the day before. It turns out the Pope was going to be celebrating the Holy Mass on the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe that evening. Across the four of us there was a Brazilian nun, an Italian nun, a Mexican (my wife), and an American (myself) all waiting in line in Rome to see an Argentine Pope preside over a mass celebrating an apparition that accrued in Mexico.
The mass itself ended up being conducted in five languages; Latin, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and English. After the mass had concluded my wife and I came across two random priests in the square and asked them if they knew of any good eateries around the Basilica. It turns out they had concelebrated the mass with the Pope and were both from Mexico studying in Rome. Within a few minutes of conversation we all agreed to go to dinner together at a local Italian pizzeria. There we continued our conversations in English and Spanish.
I tell this story because I think we sometimes forget where God is found. In this single evening I came across God’s presence in people of five different nationalities and as many languages. When I look across the county today though I see people looking at the other, those of other nationalities or languages, as something to be feared. There have been multiple instances of individuals being harassed based on the color of their skin or the language they are speaking. Last week a white women verbally assaulted a mother and child eating at a restaurant in Virginia because they were speaking Spanish (New York Post). She demands that they show her their passports and that they should “go back to [their] fucking country. You do not fucking come here and freeload on America.” That same week a Walmart employee told a customer in Texas that he should not be in this country if he did not speak English (San Antoni Current). It has also recently just came to light that La Cantera Resort & Spa (a resort that takes its very name from the Spanish word for quarry) is being sued by the U.S Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (The Paisano). The suit alleges that Hispanic employees were ridiculed, punished, demoted, and even fired for speaking Spanish. The resort had instituted a “No Spanish” policy that extended even to private conversation, lunch breaks, or working with Spanish speaking customers.
I could go on and on with more stories demonstrating the intolerance and hatred with which we are treating fellow children of God. This is not how a country should be acting that purports to be majority Christian. In fact this is not how any people should be acting that purports to value all peoples. If we are ever to find our holiness we must look towards how Jesus and the saints treated the other. One such example we can find immediate recourse to is Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe (Our Lady of Guadalupe).
On that December night the Pope reminded us in his homily in Spanish that “the Virgin [of Guadalupe] with a dark complexion and face of mixed race… the mother able to assume the features of her children to make them feel part of her blessing… from her we wish to learn to be [the] Church with a face of mixed race, indigenous, and Afro-American, the face of a farmer, the aspect of a tail, wing, cacaxtli. The face of the poor, the unemployed, boy and girl, young and old, so that no one feel barren or unproductive, that no one feel shame or feel inadequate. One the contrary, so that each one, like Elizabeth and Juan Diego, may feel they are the bearer of a promise, of hope, and can say from deep down: “Abba! Father!” beginning from the mystery of this sonship which, without erasing the feature of each one, universalized us, makes of us a people.”
