This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Jan. 24, 2011 - We have a new Dago!
Dago died six months ago, electrocuted installing electricity in his mom Natalia's house. Just devastated the family. But his brother Marcos' wife Dania was pregnant, and when everybody went off to pick coffee a month or so ago, we knew the baby would be born "in exile," as it were.
We were actually at Natalia's house eating supper Dec. 22 when the call came: baby born, healthy and happy, IT'S A BOY! "Then it's Dago!" cried Natalia. Everybody had already agreed on the name months before. Dec. 22 is also Alba's birthday, sister of Dago and Marcos. So we called her right away.
"Alba! Happy double birthday!"
"What do you mean?"
"Dania's baby!"
"Oh, yeah, it's coming soon--"
Little Dago was so new, even Alba hadn't heard the news, and they're all staying in the same house in El Transito! But the explanation was simple; Dania had given birth at a clinic in town and had not called yet. I was especially gratified, since I had been the one to break the news of Dago's death to Alba, and now I could sing her this song of hope.
Dago would have been 20 on Dec. 27, so Natalia asked if we could just say a rosary together on that day. A tiny group of us gathered before supper and prayed together, very simple, but I added one element.
Dec. 27 is the feast of St. John the Evangelist, whose letters are also in the New Testament. I read a little from the first one: "That which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have touched with our hands, that is, the Word of Life, we proclaim to you, so that you may share this Life with us, that our joy may be complete." It's about Jesus, of course, but you gotta think of Dago, too.
Mariana Teresa's first birthday was another step toward completing our joy. A celebration of Life, she renews the memory of my sister Mary Anne, who died while Maricela was pregnant, and makes a nice little substitute for my American friend Teresa (till she can return in person). They call her Mari-Te for short, and that's all Carolina could fit on the cake, but she's taking her first steps and speaking her first words, so pretty soon she can decide for herself what she likes for her name.
Presents can make any day a Christmas. In St. Louis last September, my young friend Sarah gave me a doll she made herself. I knew it had to go to someone special. When little Sarai came by with her mother, Maritza, for the first time in months, I knew she was the one. She loved the doll, of course, but without a couple operations that Sarai got from Operation Smile (and she probably needs one more), to correct her severely cleft palate, she couldn't have even smiled to show her delight. Thank you, Sarah Claus!
"Midnight mass" was at 6 p.m. Christmas Eve. We had spent nine evenings previous in the sweetest novena of the year, the Posadas, singing Christmas carols through the streets, visiting shut-ins, asking, as Mary and Joseph did 2000 years ago in Bethlehem, for a lodging ("posada") for baby Jesus.
Christmas -- or any holy time for anyone who loves life -- is not limited to Christians or even "believers." Sometimes Life reaches out to us even from a transient town like El Transito, or Las Vegas, not any bigger than the little town of Bethlehem.
A St. Louis friend gave me the most amazing book, "He Became Poor" by Christopher A. Franks, a study of Thomas Aquinas' economic teachings, if you can even imagine the relevance of such a thing from a 13th-century monk. But imagine my surprise when I discovered how St. Thomas' version of poverty, as explained by the author, mirrored what I had found in my own experience in Honduras.
For example: "Poverty is an uncomfortable subject for us. It denotes lack and insufficiency, and it seems to us a kind of violence. Poverty does indeed involve lack and insufficiency, but one embraces it, not in order to go hungry, etc., but in order to receive what one needs from others."
Indeed, "Poverty is a sign of our neediness -- that we are created for communion." And, by embracing poverty, we renounce the security and self-sufficiency that seem the "natural order" to us, when in fact the natural order is really the "divine charity," God's self-emptying, specified in Christian faith by Jesus (the "He" of the title "He Became Poor"), but a reality that blesses us all.
May 2011 fill you with that giving and receiving.
About the Author
Miguel Dulick has lived in Las Vegas, Honduras since 2003.
There he has no projects, no plans, no investments -- only to share the life of the poor.
For years he has been sending reports back to friends and family in St. Louis, and the Beacon is proud to become a part of his circle.