AMDG: A Jesuit Podcast

Embracing the Ministry of Failure: Spiritual Wisdom from Brian Christopher, SJ | A Pilgrimage to Belize, Part 1

Over the next two episodes, host Eric Clayton is going to take you on an adventure. We’re going to travel to Central America, to a small country on the Caribbean Sea. A country that is both ancient and relatively new. A place that is both a melting pot of so very many cultures and ways of life, and yet is also the least populated country in all of Central America. We're going on pilgrimage to Belize. Eric was there earlier this year visiting the Jesuit communities. Jesuits have been in Belize since 1851, when members of the English Province came over from nearby Jamaica. Ever since, Jesuit have played a foundational role in the development of the Catholic Church in the country — even before it was a country. And that last bit is important. The Mayan people lived and thrived in that land for centuries before Europeans arrived in the early 1500s. But when the Spanish conquistadors arrived — and soon after, British pirates — the Mayan people suffered, dying from conflict as well as disease. The country as it’s known today became independent in 1981. Before then, since 1862, Belize was declared part of the British Empire and known as British Honduras. As a result of the relative new-ness of the country, Belizeans are still in the process of discovering their own identity, of making known what it means to be a citizen of Belize. So, what role are the Jesuits playing in all of this? As you'll hear from today's guest, Fr. Brian Christopher, SJ, the superior of the Jesuit community in Belize, the Jesuits are called to accompaniment. Fr. Brian is focused on walking with Belizeans in discovering what it means to be Catholic and Belizean is this moment. This is part 1 of a two-part series on Belize. Next week, we'll journey to a different part of the country. In the meantime, check out this video featuring Fr. Brian and some of the lay leadership in Belize: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cLzGsVsxRs

Duration:: 26m
Broadcast on:: 13 Nov 2024
Audio Format:: other

(upbeat music) - From the Jesuit Media Lab, this is AMDG, and I'm Eric Clayton. Over the next two episodes, I'm gonna take you on an adventure. We're going to travel to Central America, to a small country on the Caribbean Sea, a country that is both ancient and relatively new, a place that is both a melting pot of so very many cultures and ways of life, and yet is also the least populated country in all of Central America. I'd like to take you to Belize. (upbeat music) I was there earlier this year, visiting the Jesuit communities. Jesuits have been in Belize since 1851, when members of the English province, or more colloquially known as the British Jesuits, came over from nearby Jamaica. Ever since, Jesuits have played a foundational role in the development of the Catholic Church in this country, even before it was a country, and that last bit is important. Here's why. I said Belize was ancient, and that's true. The Mayan people lived and thrived in that land for centuries, before Europeans arrived in the early 1500s. But when the Spanish conquistadors arrived and soon after British pirates with them, the Mayan people suffered, dying from conflict as well as disease. I also said Belize was new. The country, as it's known today, became independent in 1981. Before then, since 1862, Belize was declared part of the British Empire, known as British Honduras. As a result of the relative newness of the country, Belisians are still in the process of discovering their own identity, of making known what it means to be a citizen of Belize. And this is hard work. I said the country is a melting pot. The Mayans still live in Belize, of course, but so do descendants of the Spanish invaders and British pirates turned loggers. There are descendants of enslaved people too, the Belizean Crayle people. There are also descendants from West and Central Africa, of folks who were never enslaved, though who were moved across the ocean against their will and most believe survived a shipwreck and escaped. These are the Griffina people. And there are other people too, many families from bordering Guatemala, who make their way across that border, not to mention tourists and expats from all over the world. Belize is a beautiful place. That's why so many tourists visit each year. Mayan ruins beautiful coastlines, coral reefs. In fact, the Belize barrier reef is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. There's also something called the Great Blue Hole off the coast of Belize. A lot of tourists go there to Scuba. In fact, that was the destination of the two women, sisters actually, who sat next to me on the flight from Houston to Belize City. One of the women had been to Belize five or so times, and this was her sister's first trip. "Where are you going?" they asked me. I probably looked like I was going hiking, you know, the boots, the cargo shorts, the hat. Belize City, I replied. I didn't yet know a lot about Belize, but I did know my first destination was St. John's College, the Jesuit school in Belize's biggest city. The two women looked at me puzzled. "Oh," one said, "Belize City." You know, that's a little rough, right? I just smiled and shrugged. Because she was right, and probably understating the fact, Belize City suffers from poverty and gang violence. And while according to the US State Department, Belize as a country is quite safe for tourists to visit, there are a handful of streets on the south side of Belize City, the State Department encourages visitors to reconsider traveling to. Perhaps it won't surprise you to know that St. John be any parish, where the Jesuits do some of their parish work is located exactly there. And these streets where Americans are told to avoid. Here in the heart of the city, there's both great need and great beauty. The Jesuits are walking with the vulnerable and the suffering. For the Jesuits who have played such an outsized role in the development of the Catholic Church and Belize, in fact, until 1983, all of the bishops of Belize had been Jesuits, the question of Belizean identity is also a spiritual one. What does it mean to be Catholic in Belize? One of the primary works of the Jesuits in Belize, in addition to education and pastoral ministry, is spiritual direction and formation, using the tools of Ignatian spirituality to help Belizeans discover and articulate who God is uniquely inviting them to become. Belize is part of the US Central Southern Province of the Society of Jesus. Belize falls under the auspices of our Jesuit conference of Canada and the United States. But the Jesuits who are there now are very intentional. They're not trying to import an American church to this Central American nation on the Caribbean Sea. The name of the game is accompaniment. (gentle music) (gentle music) Father Brian Christopher has lived off and on in Belize for well over a decade. He's held multiple roles and is currently the superior of the Jesuit community, which means he is responsible for all of the Jesuits and their works in Belize. - Being such a young nation, I think that we're still crafting that narrative of what it means to be Belizean. I said we, it's not gonna include me. And most of the Jesuits here are foreigners. And it's important for us to bear that mind. I think that the best thing that we can do and the thing that we do actually do in our works here in Belize is to create a space for Belizeans to come together and dialogue about what it means to be Belizean, what it means to be Belizean and Catholic. So to create those spaces, because so many of the clergy here are from North America. And our temptation is always to import North American Catholicism here. I've learned that accompaniment is maybe the most important thing that Jesuits can do here in Belize. We're not gonna fix things. We don't have to wear with all to do that. Belizeans can take care of their own nation. They can build their own nation. I think our job really is to accompany people. And my experience has been that that's the contribution that people value the most. - Father Brian is the real deal. Everywhere we went, people greeted him, waved him down, gave him a hug. He was a pastor for a time at another Jesuit parish in Belize city, St. Martin de Porres. He lives there still in the rectory in the middle of the hubbub of the city's south side. He spent a lot of his time in Belize working to reduce gang violence. And as a result, peace is often on his mind. He spoke about it quite frequently while we were there. And he did so very beautifully. And so I asked him how he envisioned this peace. What was needed to bring it about? And how he imagined himself playing a role in that work. - There are in Belize, I would say, my experience has been. There are a lot of people walking around wounded. A lot of people walking around with the wounds of trauma. Lots of different kinds of trauma. Trauma, from home, trauma from the street. There's violence in so many different forms here. And people carry around the burden of that. So when I say peace, I guess I'm also talking about healing and the need to help people find healing. The need to help people find that presence of God deep within their own souls underneath the pain that they carry. I just think that that's crucial for this country moving forward. I think it's crucial as a church that we help people find that. But right now, you know, there is, as I said, there is a lot of violence in all its forms. And the first place when you bring up violence, the first thing that people think about is gangs on the streets, but that's really a symptom of something deeper. That's really a symptom of things that are going on in the homes and the deeper dehumanization that people endure in all sorts of different settings. So yeah, we need peace. But that peace is gonna happen, I think, when we can help people heal. - I asked Brian to share a story or two of a person he'd walked with. - And he did, and he broke our hearts. - There's one gentleman that I got to know when I was working at St. Martin de Porres Parish. And he was an alcoholic, he was a chronic alcoholic. And he would come by the rectory, you know, odd times of the day and night and give him some food and hang out with him and talk with him. And over the years, we just, we built up a rapport where we could just sit and talk. And I always valued that. I remember one time in particular, he would never go inside the church, he would never walk inside. And I remember one time in particular, he was just sitting on the steps on the side of the church crying one morning. While Mass was going on, I wasn't celebrating the Mass, but I saw him and I walked over and we sat and we talked. And I remember him saying to me, he said, "I just feel so bad that I can't go in. "I wanna go in, I wanna receive Jesus." And I said, "Well, why don't you?" And he said, "Well, there was a priest who told me once "that I'm not allowed. "If I've been drinking, I can't come into church "and receive Jesus." And I just remember, and the sadness that he felt, and the sadness that I felt too. And I think, I think even Jesus felt sad. I mean, he was a guy who was hungry for Jesus and was feeling whatever pain he was carrying, he was trying to fill it up with alcohol and he was killing himself, and he knew he was killing himself. And as a church, we said, somebody said, "No, no, you don't belong here." (gentle music) It's not a church that I wanna be a part of. It's not a church that I can be a part of. If the church doesn't open for everybody, we shouldn't open our doors at all. And it wasn't long after that that I got a call that Ivan died from alcohol poisoning, and I was able to go and bless his body that next morning, and that was one of the saddest funerals I'd ever done. Because he was a man with a really good soul who just, he just suffered, and no one was gonna be able to save 'em. No one was gonna be able to save 'em. I saw him one time when he was sober. He was sober for three weeks. I didn't even recognize him. But the three weeks, just that freedom that he felt, and I just, he was one of those poor guys who hit bottom and then just kept digging, and I hope that now he has that freedom and that peace that he was so desperate for. (gentle piano music) The story that Father Brian shared, it really points to a phrase he uses often. He speaks of the ministry of failure. I asked him about it because it struck me. It really has stuck with me ever since. It's so counter-cultural to how we usually go about our work. We don't wanna fail. We wanna succeed, and we wanna succeed often and mightily. So his answer, like so many of his reflections, was poignant, profoundly spiritual, and rooted in a lived reality that brings this idea to life. (gentle piano music) - The ministry of failure, when I use that phrase, I am thinking about the third week of the exercises, where you're at the foot of the cross with Jesus on the cross. And it really is an experience of powerlessness and accompaniment and witness. And I think we experience that here a lot. As I said before, a lot of people walk around and they're really wounded by life. And I'm not gonna fix them. I'm not gonna save them. I think that's Jesus's job, but it's my job to be there with them. It's my job to walk with them and be there at the foot of the cross when people are being crucified to be there at the foot of the cross. We're not saviors, we're not messiahs. I'm still chewing on this idea of the ministry of failure and the third week of the spiritual exercises. For those who have completed the exercises, you know that the third week is an invitation to accompany Jesus through his passion and death. We're called to just stand there and bear witness to Jesus' suffering. If you look at the text of the exercises, you think about the graces we're asked to pray for, Saint Ignatius has us ask God for sorrow, compassion, and shame because the Lord is going to his death for us. We ask for anguish with Christ in anguish, tears, and deep grief because of the great affliction, Christ endures for us. There's a helplessness in the third week that necessarily makes us uncomfortable, that necessarily invites us to step beyond ourselves and into the shoes or the life of the one we're bearing witness to. And I think this is essential to the spiritual life. It's essential, in fact, to all of our work, all of our ministry, how we view ourselves in society. - I think part of the culture of the society of Jesus is that we're very much aware of our strengths and we love to play to our strengths. And I think that when we play to our strengths or when we choose to do the kind of work where people are going to say, wow, yeah, that's, you're really having success there, right? The work where the success is apparent. I think we miss out on the third week. I think we skip over the third week of the exercises when we do that. And we're called to have the kind of freedom to go to those places where we might not succeed. Our work might fail. We're gonna, we're gonna, when we do, we find ourselves in places where on a day-to-day basis, it feels like it's two steps forward, three steps back. And we wonder, what are we still doing here? And are we making any progress? But maybe we're not in the position to judge what progress or success looks like. Maybe we gotta leave that to Jesus. But I wanna have, I want us to have the freedom to be able to go to those places. And let go of our, because we're not, we're not called to be successful, right? I mean, we really are called to be faithful. We're called to accompaniment. - I wonder, is accompaniment enough? Does accompaniment break apart the unjust systems and structures that so often keep people buried in poverty? Buried in violence, buried in suffering and heartache, right? Is accompaniment enough? What do these structures of injustice do to people in belief? - Unjust structures, I mean, they cause a lot of damage. They impact people socially, physically, economically, but they also impact people spiritually. And when I say spiritually, I don't just mean in terms of going to church. I mean that people can walk around with a diminished sense of their own dignity, a diminished sense of their own worth. I think another spiritual impact of poverty and systemic injustice is that it destroys community. There's a lot more alienation and isolation. I think those are some of the spiritual symptoms of unjust structures. But it's not just a symptom of unjust structures. I think that same kind of alienation and diminished sense of self, I think that then perpetuates injustice. I think that perpetuates cycles of violence. And I think where spiritual ministry, spiritual accompaniment, religion can have an impact is in interrupting that. Helping people to see themselves as God sees them. Helping people to have a glimpse of Jesus looking back at them and seeing their own goodness. I think that's fundamental for overcoming things like fear and the kind of malaise that can set in or the learned helplessness that people have. - So in short, yes, accompaniment can do a lot to break apart these systems and structures of injustice, standing with people, reminding them that they are beloved and beautiful and worthy, that their identity is grounded in the God of the universe. And I think this brings us right back to the beginning. What is the identity of beliefs? And more importantly to our purposes here, what role does the society of Jesus play in its discovery? - People can glimpse their own goodness, their own belovedness, and then hear the call of Christ to then act. I think that's powerful. I think that's transformative. In fact, I think that that's fundamental to making any kind of political or economic or social structural changes. Unless that spiritual conversion is there, I'm not confident that those other changes are gonna make a difference. (gentle music) - To be able to create the spaces for Belisians to come together and worship together and to dialogue together about what it means to be a Belisian church. And I think in terms of the wider diocese, the possibility that I see or the potential that I see has everything to do with synodality. So throughout the first stage of the synod process here, that was really the first time that we were bringing together folks from different parishes to have spiritual conversation. And it was a bit of a learning for the people who were involved in it. Like, you wanna hear from me about what it means to be Catholic here in Belis. So it was a bit of a learning, but I think that that's the way forward as a diocese to keep taking seriously this call to synodality, keep bringing people together so that we can, so that Belisians can imagine what this church could look like. Our job is to help that process and not get in the way of it. - There were many moments during my time in Belis that captured the sense of accompaniment, that showcased local Belisians leading the way. But there's one image that comes back to my mind. We stood in St. John Vianney Parish, that church that was located in that block of Belis City at the U.S. State Department advises against visiting. Father Brian and I stood in the main church, watching people work. And what were they doing? They were quite literally building up the church. The Jesuit who was interim pastor at the time was telling us about all these projects unfolding all around us. An unused corner was being repurposed as an actual office for parish staff. A bathroom was being installed. New fans would eventually be hung to fight off the oppressive heat. And new lights were being installed to better illuminate the congregation. These are the plans that they had. A balcony too was being constructed. It was all a tremendous amount of work, at least to my mind, to someone who knows so little about such things. But what I think deserves noting is that the Jesuits weren't the ones with the hammers or the blueprints. They weren't the ones managing the projects, at least not entirely. Those roles fell to the local community, to those folks who lived in part of the city deemed unworthy of our attention, right? Here's the thing. The Jesuits did have a role to play in that space. And it was an important one. Standing there, my Jesuit friends were showing with their very bodies, their physical presence, that in fact, this place mattered. The people mattered, but the future mattered, that they would continue to come alongside that community. That they were willing and ready to be led by the Belisians they walked with. No matter what, the US State Department advised on their website. - There is a sense of community here. Even when they fight with one another, there's a sense of community here. And my hope for Belize is simply that Belize becomes more like that, that Belize becomes more Belize. I think that's what development is gonna look like here. Yes, I hope for economic development. Yes, absolutely. But more than anything else, I hope that that spirit of the cultures here in Belize, of being together, of celebrating together, of intermarrying across lines, of valuing one another, I hope that that just becomes more and more pronounced as this nation continues to grow and develop. - Let's end our first episode here. I think it's worthwhile to note that Pope Francis's emphasis on synodality, right, on giving every member of the universal church of voice is key. It's key to our church and it's key to the church in Belize, it's key for all of us in our spiritual lives. It's how we discover our own identity, our own spiritual path, what it means to be church in community. I think we either go to God together or we don't go to God at all. And it connects this idea to our next episode on Belize, where we're going to see another theme of Pope Francis's papacy come to life in the so-called forgotten district of Belize. That is, we'll meet some of the lay leaders who are ministering to the more than 30 churches that are part of St. Peter, Clayver Parish in the southernmost part of Belize, the Toledo district. The Jesuits are there too, and they've been there for quite a while, but without these lay leaders, they would never manage to accompany and to administer so many faith communities that are hungry for God. So tune in next time. AMDG is a production of the Jesuit Media Lab, a project of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States in Washington, DC. This episode was edited by me, Eric Clayton. Our theme music is by Kevin Lasky. The Jesuit conference communications team is Marcus Bleach, Michael Lasky, Becky Cindallar, and me, Eric Clayton. Connect with the Jesuits online at Jesuits.org, on X at @ JesuitNews, on Instagram at @wearethejessuits, and on Facebook at Facebook.com/jessuits. You can also sign up for our weekly email series, now to discern this, by visiting Jesuits.org/weekly. The Jesuit Media Lab offers courses and resources at the intersection of Ignatian spirituality and creativity. If you're a writer, podcaster, filmmaker, visual artist, or other creator, check out our offerings at JesuitMediaLab.org. If you or someone you know might be called to discern a vocation to the Jesuits, connect with a Jesuit vocation promoter at via Jesuit.org. Drop us an email with questions or comments at media@jessuits.org. You can subscribe to the show on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And as St. Ignatius of Loyola, may or may not have said, go and set the world on fire. (upbeat music) You