The Cross is What We Needed

Bolivia is comprised of nine territorial Departments. In its mountainous center is the Department of Cochabamba, whose main administrative city carries the same name. This sprawling city has a population of nearly 1 ¼ million, and is expanding by leaps and bounds. Its climate is an eternal springtime, with plenty of sunshine and rainfall.

La Salette Missionaries came to minister in Bolivia 23 years ago, in the Department of Tarija, one of the southernmost areas of the country. Almost immediately young men asked to join them, and a formation house was set up in Cochabamba where they have lived and ministered for the past 20 years. Soon the international Latin-American novitiate – serving Brazil, Argentina and Bolivia – was established there in one of the fast-growing outlying barrios or neighborhoods. A few years later they established the parish of Our Lady of La Salette in that sector. Today it has two neighborhood chapels attached – Exaltation and Christ Reconciler. 
 

  In these three edifices Mass is celebrated throughout the week, families are formed through catechetical preparation for Sacraments and pastoral counseling is done. Fr. José Daniel Centeno, MS is pastor and resides with Bro. Moisés Rueda, MS in the parish rectory. That’s where I too lived while studying in Cochabamba earlier this year. Fr. John (Juan Francisco) Higgins, MS and Diego Armando Diaz, a seminarian, reside nearby in one of our La Salette formation houses. Together they reach out to some 25,000 people in 14 surrounding barrios. One very important pastoral activity is the “soup kitchens” for children that I wrote about last month. A few months ago I also wrote about the Mustard Seed Child Care Center which is going to be so much more than just a place where the children can get a meal.  

Fr. “Juan Francisco” wrote about an emotional experience he had with his people in one of the chapels – Christ Reconciler.

Four years ago this chapel, which takes in four barrios, was built with the help of our benefactors and was administered from our international novitiate – which in 2007 moved to Brazil. A year ago I was asked to accompany the people of this community on their Faith journey. Besides the issue of building the Child Care Center, there was an emotional issue for the people – there was no statue or representation of Christ Reconciler for their devotion. In Bolivia, as in all Latin America, something is needed that can be felt and touched to express the affective dimension of Faith. So far we had nothing.

Ideas were tossed around, and after a year of listening, suggesting, proposing and rejecting, we finally decided that the Cross, which continues to be the scriptural representation of God reconciling all things to Himself in Christ, was what we needed.

A family from the parish generously volunteered to have a Crucifix made by a local artisan. On the first Sunday of Lent the faithful of this parish chapel, with genuine emotion and living faith, accepted this Cross of Christ Reconciler. It is large, with natural hair and has an ornamental skirt-like covering.

Like many others, I was emotionally touched by an elderly gentleman who, as he proclaimed the first scriptural reading during the Mass in which the Cross was brought into the chapel, was moved to tears. May this representation of God’s love for us touch many hearts for generations to come, and help them to “feel” God’s Reconciling Love for them.