Father Jim Manship (pictured here with Monse√±or Altamirano and Maria Elizabeth) of St. Rose of Lima has been filing dispatches from his visit to Ecuador, to see families and neighbors of New Haven’s, and his church’s, newest arrivals. (Find his previous dispatches here, here, here here, & here.)
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By Father Jim Manship
Hello New Haven,
I am a priest, so it is hard for me to avoid the topic of religion, or rather faith. Before all else, Ecuador is a Catholic country. That is not to say that there are not other expressions of faith in Ecuador. But the majority of Ecuadorians would identify themselves as Catholics, however with various expressions of the same faith.
For the America Catholics, the Mass and the parish are the most identifiable experiences of being Catholic. For Latino Catholics, one can add popular religion to the list of their Catholic experiences. I would like comment a bit about popular religiosity. On one basic level, one can say that popular religion is a means to transmit the Christian faith within the given culture. Moreover, for the Latino Catholic, popular religion unites the mind and heart, opening the believer to the divine in the everyday events of life. The parishioners at Saint Rose of Lima have helped me “experience” my faith more profoundly through their lives.
It is important to note that there is a connection between popular religion and the indigenous religion. The Native Americans had their own religion and system of worship before the arrival of the Europeans, specifically the Spanish and Portuguese. There was an established hierarchy in their society and religion, much like the Spanish and Catholic Church. For them, the gods of their religion took the form of the powerful forces of nature, the sun, moon, the earth, and water. They could feel the presence of the divine because they were surrounded by the divine. While there was a sense of the proximity of their gods, the believer had to respect these powerful forces, approaching them through the mediation of their rituals of their religion.
For the Latino believer today, the sense of the nearness of the Divine continues, finding expression in the popular religion, the rituals of the church, and the culture. In Latin America, one only needs to scratch the surface in order to discover something of the transcendent. One can see in buses, taxis, and stores images of Christ, the Virgen Maria, and the saints. One may also see in the homes of our Latino neighbors small altars (altarcitos). The altar being the place where there is an interchange between the divine and the secular happens. There are sayings, like “A Dios”, “May God repay you,” and “If God wills” that express the nearness of God. Our Ecuadorian folkloric group form flowers and other natural forms in their dances, their movements also can take the form of the sun.
One has to feel and touch the divine through the world. Saints are a point of contact with the divine. Men, women, and children, those who lead model lives of faith or who spilled their blood for Christ are venerated by Catholics, believing that these people of our past now enjoy a place close to God. Many people in Latin America are named for the saint whose day falls on the same date as their birthday. Someone’s patron saint is meant to be a companion, a guide, animating the life of faith and expressing the link between this life and the one that awaits us.
(Pictured: A close up of the uncorrupted body of Narcisa, her faced covered with a porcelain mask. )
Ecuador is awaiting the canonization of a new saint, Narcisa de Jes√∫s. On Oct. 12, Pope Benedict will declare this young Ecuadorian woman a saint. I had the opportunity to visit her home town of Nobol, which is now home to a large church in her honor about 30 minutes outside of Guayaquil, in the southwestern coastal region. In the main altar of the church one may see her uncorrupted body. People come from all parts of Ecuador to ask for her intercession before God in the presence of her mortal remains. (According to their culture, many native people interned their dead in their homes as an expression that the family bond does not break with death.)
There is a union between the native religion and Catholic faith, a meeting of the native and European, from which birth a new race, the mestizo. (An interesting fact: 30% of the habitants of Ecuador are indigenous and are a significant political force.) The exemplar of this mestizo reality is the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Virgen Maria, dressed as an indigenous queen, but appears as a mestiza woman, pregnant with the child Jesus. So the mestizo is not only the product of the union of races, but a new expression of the central Christian beliefs of the incarnation, God becoming man in Jesus, and the paschal mystery of the death and resurrection of Jesus.
I had the opportunity to meet Maria Elizabeth, a 22 year old native woman who lives in Azogues. She is preparing to be fully initiated in the Catholic faith through the Sacraments of Communion and Confirmation. She hardly speaks Spanish, preferring to speak her native language, Quichua, language aside, nothing seems to impede her. She seemed a bit timid at first, because of the social hierarchy that exists in the culture, but she has no fear.
(Pictured: Faithful come from all parts of Ecuador to prayer in the presence of the uncorrupted body of Narcisa.)
Maria Elizabeth and Bishop Altamirano (one of my hosts) tried to teach me some words in Quichua, without much success. But that is ok, because I know my new sister in Christ will bring the Word of God to her family and friends in their own language and culture. Masses and pastoral care in her village are offered in their own language because they train their priests to speak their language.
Next time, my visit to Quinche and Cisne, sites of the two most important religious shrines in Ecuador.
Sincerely,
Father James Manship
(Pictured: Narcisa de Jes√∫s)