Fr. Stefano Mosca: in Covid-19 quarantine, Mindanao needs the Eucharist like it needs food (I)
On the southern island of the Philippines, the quarantine block on masses in parishes fosters impatience and frustration at violence of bloodthirsty monitoring officials (frontiliners). The Eucharist serves to combat despair. A suggestion for all countries - such as Italy - where communities are divided between those who demand mass and those who put health safety first.
Lakewood (AsiaNews) - "If you eat well you become physically strong, intelligent ... this is also true for the Eucharist,” concludes Fr. Stefano Mosca, PIME missionary in the Philippines, drawing from his experience in Mindanao. While respecting the rules, mass and communion are essential services in emergency situations: not only health crises but those of work, fatigue and meaning. Below Part 1 of Fr. Moscow’s reflection.
Dear friends in Italy,
I read the various comments to the position of the Italian bishops against the government guilty of not having reopened the churches for worship on May 4th. They are being accused of having used inappropriate words and tones, of exaggeration in calling everything a "violation of freedom of worship"; Christian worship is much more than Mass; faith is handed down between generations even without priests and Masses; the Church is not a building, but a living community that also gathers under a shed, etc.
Allow me to share my thoughts garnered from being a missionary for 17 years in the Philippines and for 14 years assigned to Lakewood (Zamboanga del Sur, Mindanao), in a parish on the shore of a volcanic lake of 18 thousand inhabitants, few Catholics, many animist tribals, many sects who defraud these poor tribals with money, scholarships and food.
If you eat you become strong
Premise: I agree with all of the wise observations that I have read, they all bear some truth, but I want to strongly reiterate one thought. For many experiences lived in this parish of mine for 14 years, I can say with certainty that a Christian life without the Eucharist and a Christian life fed regularly by the Eucharist is not really the same. Like a well-fed body that can work, think, design and a malnourished body that can only try to survive is not the same, it is, in spite of itself, very limited in action and thought due to lack of strength.
Here in the parish I have many students from the mountains who live in the hostel and attend middle school here in the center because they don't have it in their villages. The report card from their elementary school in the mountains almost always reveal poor grades, barely passing the mark. For this reason, they always enter the first grade in the fourth and final section which is that of the "slow learners", those who really learn slowly. I wonder are all the mountain kids stupid? No, their problem is one: food.
In the mountains they eat rice and salt often only once a day, sometimes herbs, never meat. Sometimes they don't have rice so they only eat corn. A very poor diet that limits their brain development: they struggle to concentrate, to memorize, they get tired immediately and lose 90% of what the teacher teaches. When they come to the hostel and I focus on giving them a healthy diet and the results they achieve change. After having always been relegated to the fourth section, they become the first, the best of their section. This is to say that if you eat right you become physically strong, intelligent, capable, inventive, quick to learn.
So it is with the Eucharist; the Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us clearly about the fruits of Communion:
1391 Holy Communion augments our union with Christ. The principal fruit of receiving the Eucharist in Holy Communion is an intimate union with Christ Jesus.
1392 What material food produces in our bodily life, Holy Communion wonderfully achieves in our spiritual life. Communion with the flesh of the risen Christ, a flesh "given life and giving life through the Holy Spirit,"preserves, increases, and renews the life of grace received at Baptism. This growth in Christian life needs the nourishment of Eucharistic Communion, the bread for our pilgrimage until the moment of death, when it will be given to us as viaticum.
1393 Holy Communion separates us from sin. The body of Christ we receive in Holy Communion is "given up for us," and the blood we drink "shed for the many for the forgiveness of sins." For this reason the Eucharist cannot unite us to Christ without at the same time cleansing us from past sins and preserving us from future sins:
1394 As bodily nourishment restores lost strength, so the Eucharist strengthens our charity, which tends to be weakened in daily life.
1396 The unity of the Mystical Body: the Eucharist makes the Church. Those who receive the Eucharist are united more closely to Christ. Through it Christ unites them to all the faithful in one body - the Church. Communion renews, strengthens, and deepens this incorporation into the Church, already achieved by Baptism. In Baptism we have been called to form but one body. The Eucharist fulfills this call.
1397 The Eucharist commits us to the poor. To receive in truth the Body and Blood of Christ given up for us, we must recognize Christ in the poorest, his brethren:
risto unites them to all the faithful in one body: the Church. Communion renews, strengthens, deepens this incorporation into the Church already achieved through Baptism. In Baptism we were called to form one body [Cf. 1 Cor 12:13]. The Eucharist fulfills this call.
1397. The Eucharist commits to the poor. To receive in truth the Body and Blood of Christ offered for us, we must recognize Christ in the poorest, his brothers:
You drank the Blood of the Lord and you don't recognize your brother. You dishonor this same table, not judging worthy to share your food the one who has been deemed worthy to participate in this table. God has freed you from all your sins and invited you to this banquet. And you, not even for this, have become more merciful [St. John Chrysostom)
And the Catechism of Pius X also clearly told us:
345. What effects does the Eucharist produce in those who receive it worthily? The Eucharist, in those who receive it worthily, preserves and increases grace, which is the life of the soul, as food does for the life of the body; forgives venial sins and preserves from mortals; it gives spiritual consolation and comfort, increasing the charity and hope of the eternal life of which it is a pledge.
Two months without Mass
Here my people have not seen the priest in the chapels or participated in Mass for two months. It has been two months since my people have been nourished with the Eucharist. How is their Christian life today not regularly nourished by the Eucharist? How is their charity, their communion at home and with neighbors, their trust in the Lord, in this period of illness, of deaths and crises in terms of work, money, food and above all of freedoms denied? Well, there are already many signs of retrogression in my Christian flock: they lament, they show anger towards frontliners [1], envy and jealousy are growing more and more; there are quarrels in the family, also due to forced imprisonment, and bickering with neighbors. Many begin to swear against the Lord and even the frontliners start brutally beating hungry people on the street, who are only looking for alms and rice, and sometimes they kill them, like that mentally retarded man killed because in his inability to understand he went around on the street. The vice president of the nation Lenie Lobredo on television attacks President Duterte saying: “The enemy is the virus not the people. We fight the virus not the people; those must be helped ".
Local politicians have pledged to distribute rice and some canned food to the people in the villages; from Manila the government gives 5 thousand pesos to families recognized as poor and needy. Somehow we survive, we put something in our stomach. But who is concerned with distributing the Eucharist on the streets of the villages so that the soul is nourished and not only the body? My missionary companion, a Filipino Dehonian from the parish bordering mine, visited all his villages distributing the Eucharist to Catholics who waited for his passage on their doorstep, after following the Mass broadcast on TV.
Don Davide Milani said: "The coordinates must be guaranteed so that the recovery is as attentive as possible to every dimension of the human being". And here I think there is the biggest mistake of all the governments of the world in this period of quarantine: they have committed themselves to filling people's stomachs, but they have forgotten that man is not just a stomach; we are not like pigs that despite being always in a cage, it does not matter, as long as they eat and fatten themselves. In these quarantine days, three nurses and a priest committed suicide in Italy. They certainly did not lack food, but everyone wrote: "I can't take it anymore" and 998 Italians took their own lives in 2019 because of economic problems or because without a job.
Bishop Pablo David, bishop of Kalookan, Manila, in his video homily on the Sunday of the Good Shepherd told of a Manila nurse who after treating many coronavirus patients, also became infected. Anguished and disappointed, he rebelled against God: "Lord, why me, I who have served the sick so far !?". Providence wanted that in his desperation he found the cell phone number of Msgr. David and called him asking for prayers. The bishop concluded his homily by suggesting that he seek help from volunteer psychologists, and by telling his priests to give their cell phone numbers to people, so that many can still find a voice of hope in the midst of their distress.
(End of Part One)
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