Mass at the hospital
Padre Roberto has two Saturday masses, one at the parish and one in the local hospital. Or at least, I thought it was in the hospital… more like *at* the hospital…
Allow me to explain. Because Mexico has a highly secular elite, with a strong separation between Church and State in law, priests sometimes have trouble getting into hospitals to care for people. There are no chaplains, for example, in a secular hospital. And, I might add, there are no chapels, and no masses.
However, because Mexico is also highly Catholic, the people *want* religious services. They *want* the mass said for the sick and their families, and they want it close to where their loved ones are, i.e. the hospital. So what is the solution?
Simple: the people themselves erected a shrine to Our Lady of Guadelupe just outside the hospital, in a side alley. And the priest goes once per week to say mass outdoors, in the side alley.
True story! So we packed up the car with a the mass books, a portable mass kit, and even a portable altar. Once we got there it took a grand total of five minutes to turn an alleyway into a chapel. We were expected: chairs were already set up, and there was even a choir! It was very touching, to see how people just would not let their faith be extinguished. I am not sure how many understood that the powers-that-be officially did not want them there. I expect many of them have had the experience of being looked down upon so much they hardly noticed it anymore. But at the same time, it didn’t change anything: the mass is the mass, even in an alley, and the Eucharist has the power to turn even an alley into a palace.
I shared some coffee with some people afterwards, and all I sensed was the joy of faith. Yeah, it was outdoors at night. Yeah, it was cold (by Cuernavaca standards). But these people were doing something their earliest ancestors on the faith did as well. If those early Christians has the same joy, no wonder the Roman Empire couldn’t get rid of them. From what I could see, joy is the ultimate answer to oppression.