One of the foundational experiences of my life and my priesthood is the years I spent doing mission work in the Dominican Republic.
I served in La Sagrada Familia Parish in the southwest part of the country, not too far from the Haitian border.
Our parish had 27 villages, and 50, 000 people, most of whom were subsistence farmers, scratching a living out of a desert-like soil.
In addition to the regular pastoral activity of the parish, we also had a medical clinic, pharmacies, an emergency rehydration center, a sewing school, a literacy program, and a latrine-building effort. We strove to live the fullness of the Church’s life and teachings.
During my first year there, I was very overwhelmed by the material poverty of the people and my struggles to learn Spanish, but as all of that became more familiar, I discovered the beauty of the spiritual richness of the people. They had much to teach me; here are some lessons I learned.
Lessons learned
Gratitude: I have shared the story often of a family in our parish who were poorer than most.
They lived up in the hills by themselves in a house they had constructed out of wood, cement, and mud.
They had one of everything: One daughter, one table, one chair, one pot, and one chicken. They ate once a day. We joked that when the chicken was good and ready we would have a great feast!
Receiving word that their daughter was ill, I went bouncing up to their house in my Toyota truck to anoint and pray with her.
Afterward, I sat outside with the parents, watching a brilliant sunset and a spectacular sea of stars appearing in the night sky.
They made me sit on the chair; I was the guest and they sat on the ground.
When I got up to leave, the father untied the chicken and handed it to me as a gesture of gratitude for anointing his daughter!
It was the one thing they had and he was giving it to me, like the widow’s mite in the Gospel.
That night, I learned the great secret of the Dominican people. I had often wondered what was the source of their joy, contentment, and peace as they endured a hard-scrabble existence that most of us could never even imagine.
When I received the chicken, I realized that gratitude pervaded the spirit of the people I encountered in the D.R., and this spirit freed them from sadness, jealousy, resentment, entitlement, pettiness, and selfishness.
When I can be truly grateful for the many gifts the Lord has poured into my life, my problems, troubles, and sadness get a whole lot smaller.
Living in the moment: I quickly learned that the Dominicans had a different sense of time than we Americans.
A wedding scheduled for 2 p.m. would actually start at 4 p.m. A meeting set to begin at 9 a.m. would only truly start after everyone attending had greeted everyone else in a fulsome fashion.
A person coming to ask a favor would spend the first 30 minutes asking about my health and family before stating his business.
From an American, pragmatic point of view, such differences could be maddening, but I learned how to better live in the present moment as a result of the experience.
We can be so over-scheduled, distracted, busy, and frenetic, that we seldom actually engage in our present reality.
To truly listen to another, to be absorbed in prayer, to give our full attention to the task at hand, to savor the gift of Mass, to relax with friends over a meal, to do less perhaps, but to do it with more love and attentiveness, is to value the present moment with greater insight.
We certainly need to plan wisely, multi-task efficiently, work hard, and accomplish much, but I never want to miss out on the present moment. It is where God abides, waiting to reveal His love and will to us.
Joy in simplicity: In the Dominican Republic, people would offer you a chair and a cup of coffee if you came to visit them.
They would never ask you to leave or intimate that they had better things to do.
Enjoying conversation, singing Church songs together, children playing with a stick or a torn ball, and watching the sky (I have never seen bigger or more beautiful cumulus clouds anywhere than in the Dominican Republic) were simple pastimes, which brought great joy and peace.
In their material poverty, the people there were probably happier and more peaceful than most of us.
Possessing no inflated expectations, they were content with simple things and ready to share what they had with others.
Being grateful
Our Catholic spirituality teaches us to be grateful, to live in the present moment, and to embrace simplicity — three effective ways to discover the presence of God.
I would like to think that the Catholic culture of the Dominican Republic helped form the hearts and minds of the people there to live as they did.
I do not need to idealize the Dominican people; they are sinners, like all of us, but they taught me precious lessons, which are sometimes hard to embrace in our current cultural moment of anger, entitlement, and self-absorption.