Holy Thursday
I celebrated Holy Thursday Mass at Okusijoni, where most of the Catholics are Acholi. In spite of its proximity to the Nile, the area is very dry, parched and uninviting. Standing in stark contrast to the barren landscape was the small army of children who welcomed me as I drove up to the chapel.

Juma Santo, the catechist, and I discussed the liturgy, and then he departed to change clothes, since he had been planting maize on my arrival. I was left in the thatched chapel with probably fifty grinning, wide-eyed four- to six-year-olds seated on the log pews. One of the children in the front row, a girl missing her two front teeth, started singing, and instantly the chapel was transformed into a concert hall, filled with children warbling like birds at dawn. They sang everything they knew. And then sang it again. They couldn't understand a word of English but were watching my face to determine if I was enjoying their songs. I thanked them in Acholi, which made them happy. Then I pulled out my puppet Scovia, and she thanked them in Acholi. They went nuts. 

At one point in the liturgy, I knelt on the dirt floor of the chapel and washed the feet of several elderly people, including a widow of seventy, Lillian Okaya. In the settlements, shoes are rare, and socks nonexistent. The feet of those poor people who work their meager plots of land are, like their hands, worn, leathery, and dirty. After I finished washing the twelve selected for the occasion, Lillian washed my smooth and absurdly clean feet. I looked down at her; over my years here, she has come to consider me as her son. She raised and lost six children, three by disease and three in the Sudan civil war, along with her husband. It was a humbling moment.
 

For me, Jesus' act of carefully washing the feet of his disciples, as a slave would wash the feet of his owner, contains the biggest mystery of all. I know that I circle Christ's love in this ritual, eventually submitting to the centripetal force of that love. I understand that love, but I don't understand it. I get it, but I don't get it. As I washed the feet of the Okusijoni people and they mine, I looked into their faces of faith. They get it.

At the end of the Mass, I asked Susan, one of the women leaders in the chapel, to offer a closing prayer. She is twenty-five, the mother of four, and possesses a smile that could light up the darkest night. She prayed, her eyes closed, holding her six-month-old baby in her arms, the child's head resting tranquilly on Susan's shoulder. She rocked slightly as she prayed. The chapel was hushed; even the noises of the bush seemed muted. Juma told me after Mass that she prayed for a deeper understanding of the humility of God. And she prayed for me, that I would be protected from all dangers, from discouragement, and from sickness, and that I would know the gratitude of the people of Okusijoni for sharing my faith with them. Now isn't that the ironic clincher? Me sharing my faith with them? Isn't it they who are sharing their faith with me?

Good Friday
Frido, the director of the JRS [Jesuit Refugee Service] project in Adjumani, joined me today at the village of Kobo for the Good Friday liturgy. Every year he comes with me on Good Friday.

The Kobo “chapel” is on a small promontory that overlooks the West Nile. Large rocks beneath a towering tree on the promontory serve as pews.

I always come to chapels in the villages mentally prepared for snafus, big and small. Sure enough, today the catechist, Simon, forgot to bring a cross—on Good Friday. And, too, the poor man was the only one present who could read, let alone read in Bari, the language of the people, so he wound up reading John's entire Passion account as well as the intercessions of the Good Friday liturgy. It was a lot of words and he was agonizingly slow, but it didn't bother the people, who listened intently. Simon is a simple man, liked by all.

Soon it was time for the veneration of the cross. What to do about the crucifix? Fortunately, I had with me an ebony cross about fifteen inches high, one with a corpus. But the corpus had broken loose from the cross during the trip to Kobo. I took a rubber band I found stashed in my backpack and used it to bind Jesus around his chest to the cross. Then we had to figure out how to prop up the crucifix during veneration. Frido suggested banding the cross and corpus to his aluminum water container, which was originally a bottle of Danish vodka. Once assembled, we placed the crucifix in all its black beauty on the little altar.

The veneration by the congregation was direct, their faith bringing new meaning to liturgical propriety. The people of Kobo—first the elders, then the younger people, and finally the children—approached the crucifix and, kneeling reverently on a papyrus mat, bowed before the cross, or kissed the feet of the corpus, or reached out just to touch. It was an unfettered and tender piety. How could it be otherwise? Sudanese refugees know better than most the cold blade of physical and emotional suffering; they know the cruelty of injustice; and they know the size and power of sacrificial love rendered for the beloved.

After we had made our own veneration, Frido and I stood off to the side and watched the people come to the crucifix, bound with a rubber band to a vodka bottle. I whispered to him, “Can we possibly forget this Good Friday?” He shook his head. “Never.”

Easter Vigil
This afternoon I was at Oliji, a village of Madi-speaking Catholics next to the Nile led by a well-organized young catechist named Andruga. The liturgy was under a tree again, since part of the chapel roof burned down when leaders tried to smoke out a colony of termites.

A large and enthusiastic crowd—maybe three hundred people—greeted me as I pulled in to the village an hour before Mass. I heard confessions, not understanding much but able to absolve in Madi. Midway through the confessions, which took place under the chapel tree, a powerful thunderstorm blew through, forcing us to continue under a section of the chapel roof that was still intact. 

Because of security issues on the roads after dark, I needed to start the vigil at 4:00 p.m., which took the punch out of the Service of Light. But adjustment is easy for people who adjust all the time. There were thirty-one baptisms. By the time I was through anointing all the little heads and chests, three-quarters of the babies were screaming. The people loved it, though, and at the conclusion of the ceremony everyone applauded and the women ululated and the choir unleashed some wonderful music. Like a speeding locomotive, we blazed into the Easter “Gloria.”

After Mass, Andruga and I, with many of the women, walked to the edge of the village to visit a sick woman named Lucietta. Andruga wanted me to anoint her and give her communion. The women assisted her out of her hut to a mat underneath a tree, formed a circle around her, and sang and prayed: Oliji's cloud of witnesses. Lucietta probably weighed about eighty pounds, and in her serene and welcoming face I could detect a hint of a Parkinson's-like tremor. She looked old but did not know her age. She remained silent throughout the ceremony, a ritual with which she was familiar, having many times before been part of the circle.

After the women finished, I knelt in front of Lucietta and anointed her hands and head, then gave her communion. I carefully took her beautiful, tremulous face in my hands, tilting her head so that she could look into my eyes, and blessed her. In such a moment, when the near-death anointed one looks at me, everything I have ever studied about sacraments of encounter becomes clear. I rested silently before an obvious and splendid truth: this touch was an encounter with the heart of God. 

She asked me in Madi, “What is your name?”

I responded in Madi, “My name is Gary, Abuna Gary.”

She peered into my face, smiled, and exclaimed, “This is a Madi name!” (There is a Madi word, gaari, that means “bicycle.”) Then she slowly said, “Abuna Gaari” and laughed. I laughed. The cloud of witnesses laughed.

We left her sitting prayerfully on her mat and headed for the pickup—Andruga, those wonderful women, and me, Father Bicycle. Later, driving on the bumpy road toward Adjumani, dusk settling in, I commented to Ratib that if I was going to fight for God, all I wanted backing me up were the women of Oliji, armed with the most powerful of weapons: their prayer. Ratib, a Madi and a Muslim, nodded reflectively and said, “A good choice, Father, a good choice.”

Easter Sunday
This morning, as I headed for the village of Dubaju, I encountered soldiers stationed in pickups on one of the three dirt roads that lead in and out of Adjumani. A district special election is to be held next week, and they were there in anticipation of possible violence. I was a bit unnerved by their guns and frowning faces. But my anxiety was dispelled when, about a hundred meters from the Dubaju chapel, I was greeted by twenty dancing children. Preceding my pickup in two lines, they led me to the chapel area, singing and dancing and clapping all the way.

I was tired, but I was energized during Mass by a happy, excited group of worshipers singing in several African languages. After Mass, delegated members of the congregation gave Easter speeches while I sat down and relaxed. At one point, a little girl, Kiden, maybe three years old, came up to my chair, crawled into my lap, and fell asleep. Apparently, Kiden and some buddies had recently made a raid on a mango tree, so she was covered in mango juice, which meant that half of the flies in the Nile valley were drawn to her, a fact of which she was blissfully unaware. Eventually, as the Easter talks were ending, her grandmother appeared, hoisted the sleepyhead from my lap, and then disappeared with her into the crowd.

I think of Kiden in my arms: isn't this a metaphor for the JRS mandate to accompany the refugees of the world? Kiden's little life is besieged constantly by deprivation and exploitation, yet in my arms—beating heart against beating heart—she could experience her dignity, that promised and sanctified human dignity that is at the shining center of Christ's resurrection.

from They Come Back Singing: Finding God with the Refugees
© 2008 by Gary Smith, S.J.