“I’ve been getting a lot of positive feedback from many of you about our daily challenge.  Here is a very beautiful testimony from one of our NYC missionaries who I always think of as “The smiling missionary.”  She always has the biggest, broadest smile welling out of her, regardless of the conditions out in SoHo.  Here’s her note…

Holy Week Reflections

Wednesday – Do a rosary with neighbors to mark the beginning of the Triduum:

Since I am currently on a farmland with no nearby neighbors, I called my parents in Nicaragua to see if they’d be able to pray the rosary at sunset. I tried to get my two brothers to join, but they were not interested. My mother said she’d be gardening around sunset, but that my father was happy to do it with me over Zoom. It felt like a special treat because now days, as an adult, it is rare to find myself spending one-on-one quality time with my father.

I came to see this opportunity as a sign from God pushing me towards a closer relationship with my earthly father. Although it is not a bad relationship, and he is the person in my immediate family I most resemble, I have not dedicated as much quality time with my father, as I have with my mother over the past recent years. This might just have been a natural result of spending more time with my mother, while father dedicated a significant amount of time to his job. Yet, I have noticed how throughout this Holy Week, God is telling me to take advantage of my time with my father and make the most of it, even while separated by a continent. It was a gift from God to have had this opportunity, because I could not thing of a more precious activity for a father-daughter to bond over than praying the rosary. God has his own timeline for why things happen at the time they do, but party of faith is accepting that it is his intended plan and we might not in the moment understand His mysterious timeline, but we have to trust that he loves us and it is happening the way it does because of this.

Thursday – Do an extra special act of service for someone in your family today as a mark of your unity with Christ in the washing of the feet. Ask your entire family to join, even those away from you, to join in the Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord’s Supper at Old St. Pat’s:

I thought of my family members and who most needs an act of service, and my first thought came to our housekeeper, Veronica- after living with us for over two decades, I consider her as family. I called my father that morning and asked him to help her out financially on my behalf, as she prepares to head to the countryside to get through these difficult times with her family. 

As I am currently stuck on a farm in Vermont and the only other person in the house is my boyfriend, I washed his feet after watching the Old St. Pat’s mass, which I watched at the same time as my extended family also tune-in after I emailed them. I felt a bit of frustration though as I felt a sense of “uselessness” in my ability to “act” in doing  an act of service. However, as I reflected on this discomfort at the sense of inertia, I realized how lucky I am to be able to be where I am, during this time. Instead of wallowing at how far I am from my family’s home and my own place in NYC, or feeling stuck on this farm in Vermont, which I originally expected to only be at for a week, I should see how God has been protecting me along the way, and blessing me with a beautiful place to “shelter-in-place”. Perhaps instead of getting a sense of urgency and panic, he wants me to take a pause look at my beautiful natural surroundings and have faith that “this too shall pass” but I ought to give thanks to him because even amidst the crisis, we can see how he loves us.

The smiling missionary