Google Earth Pictorial: St.Filipe de Neri
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A old man is sitting on his porch in a small town and a stranger comes up to him.

The stranger says, “Good morning. I’ve just been offered a job near by town and was considering moving into this town. Could you help me out and tell me what kind of people live here?” 

The old man replied, “Well, how do you find the kind of people that live in the town where you come from?” 

The stranger replied, “Oh, they’re miserable. They are mean and disingenuous. They are suspicious and backstabbing. They grumble at you on the street. They’re not very nice at all.” 

The old man replied, “I’m not surprised. I think you’d find the same kind of people here.”  

Another stranger came by that afternoon and said to the old man, “Good afternoon. I’ve just been offered a job near by town and was considering moving into this town. Could you help me out and tell me what kind of people live here?” 

The old man replied, “Well, how do you find the kind of people that live in the town where you come from?” The stranger replied, “They’re wonderful. They are helpful to everyone. They smile at you on the street. They are supportive and generous to people in need.”  

The old man replied, “I’m not surprised. I think you’d find the same kind of people here.”  

Since I have been on pilgrimage, I am astonished at how often I experience encounters where it seems like an angel is looking over me, that God is using a person to speak to me, that blessings abound. I find myself asking, “Why is that?” What is so special about a pilgrimage that makes people see things differently?  

One of the greatest pieces of wisdom in the scriptures, as I see it, is found in Matthew 5:45. “God sends his rain on the just and the unjust.” It answers for me the difficult theological problem of retribution. Does God really want me to suffer? Am I suffering for something that I did? Why is all this happening to me? 

These questions have a biting sting of labored self-infatuation. Get over yourself! It is raining because that is the way God created the world, so shut up and deal! But why then, in the discipline of prayer, in the constant pursuit of surrender of self to God, in our daily prayers, and yes in pilgrimage, does God seem more abundant in God’s blessing?

I think the answer has something to do with the story that I used to begin today’s blog. The way we find the world often speaks more about ourselves than it does about the world. The old man in the story teach us this truth. Two different strangers come with different responses, but he has the same answer. You will find in the world what you bring to it. As I put it two days ago in my blog, we see things not as they are, but as we are. (My paraphrase of St. Thomas Aquinas’s teaching on the mode of the knower).

The scripture puts it this way in Galatians 6:8 “Whatsoever someone soweth, that person shall also reap.” The act of being on pilgrimage has put me in a state where I am expecting to find God everyday, and to my surprise he is. It still rains on me – last night coming into Albuquerque, I ran into a pretty bad snowstorm, but in the morning God speaks.

 I visited San Filipe de Neri parish today. They have just finished celebrating their 300 year anniversary as a parish. It is the oldest church in New Mexico. It is strikingly different from anything I have seen thus far. I’m now in the heart of the Southwest where Spanish missionaries came with the Spanish settlers. The architecture is known as Adobe. It is a style based of the Pueblo tribe of Native Americans from this area. Red clay was thickly piled together with lumber and straw to create thick walls which served as a heat sink, keeping the interior of a building cool during the hot summers of the desert and warm in the winter. 

These early mission churches became the center of the towns that spotted the landscapt of the Southwest. Public gatherings, business, and celebrations all took place in the public square, right outside the church. Now Albuquerque is large town and San Filipe is not the center of the city, but in the area of Albuquerque known as “Old Town,” the parish is still the center of the community’s life. Many of the church buildings that emerged with the foundation of these Southwest pueblos now function merely a public museums and historical icons, but not San Filipe. San Filipe is an active parish today serving both history and the history still being written. 

The parish was originally established by Franciscans, but they were forced to leave. The Jesuits then took over for a stretch of 98 years. My parishioners back at St. Ignatius parish in Chicago will sympathize with this parish for the amount of time the Jesuits spent here. My parishioners will also note the similarity between the Francis Xavier in our chapel in Chicago and the one here. Either the one in Chicago was stolen in the last month, or I these are copies. I’m thinking the latter. To see my pictorial of San Filipe de Neri click here. You need to have downloaded Google Earth in order for the pictorial to work.  

At Mass today, we celebrate the Feast of St. John Bosco. He formed the Salesian order and was reknowned for his work with young people. Having served as a youth minister for 7 years and dedicating this pilgrimage to teaching young people in the Church about the universality of the Church, I considered a blessing to be able to celebrate the feast day of the life eternal of St. John Bosco. This feast day is here every year and yet, I’ve never made a point to celebrate it. So why am I so lucky this year? 

My life is full of challenges these days. Things aren’t going the way I want them to go and I find that people I would like to depend on, fail me in their perception of me and their words about me. Sometimes it feels like God is against me and this pilgrimage, but then I go to Mass and find unique consolation in the words of St. Paul and the priest today. (Hebrews 12:4-7, 11-15). The message was about God’s love and how God disciplines us for God, as a parent disciplines a child. The discipline bears fruit beyond expectations. (For me, it has brought the ability to discern spirits, the calling for Christians to build up the body of the Church, and to listen to where God speaks to me the most.) So why am I so lucky this year to find God speaking to me, when I need these words the most? 

Well I’m driving through another snow storm right now. I’m not sure that the storm is here because I’m the trucker ahead of me is just and I’m not, or vice versa. The blessings of God are made apparent, because I’m looking for the blessings of God. God’s love is always there, but what isn’t always there is my willingness or discipline to find them. We do truly reap what we sow.