La Farmacia

(To listen to Fr. Mullen's sermon, please click here).

“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”  (Mt. 11: 28)

The altar in the church of Nuestra Señora de los Desamparados, on the outskirts of Puerto Cortez in Honduras, is free-standing.  It is, in fact, a crudely made table, nailed together, its plank-top painted white.  It was not difficult to lift it and carry it off of its platform and into the sacristy – through a door on the Gospel side, more or less the same location as the sacristy here at Saint Mark’s.  But in this sacristy there are no vestments stored, and no precious vessels.  The wooden chalice and paten we had used for the Mass were already washed up and placed in the shoebox they are kept in somewhere else.

The shelves of the sacristy had been lined with the contents of many of the duffel bags we carried with us to Honduras: Amoxicillin, Doxycycline, Lisinopril, Glipizide, Benadryl and its liquid sibling Banophen, Metoprolol, Cepahlexin, Ciprofloxacin, Ranitidine, Albendazole, Metronidazole, Prednisone, Azithromycin, Hydrochlorothiazide, Hydocortisone, triple-antibiotic, and Chlortrimazol creams, and Albutrin inhalers, along with liquid Tylenol for children in two different dosages, suspensions of antibiotics ready to be reconstituted (also for children), baby aspirin, Tylenol, Ibuprofen, Tums by the thousands, and a small cache of injectable medications kept inside a locked metal cabinet that I was not allowed to look at, let alone touch that I know included insulin, and thousand and thousands of vitamins for children and adults.

I will not bore you with an inventory of the comparable supply of medical supplies also carried in those duffel bags: stethoscopes, scalpels, swabs, pulse-ox monitors, bandages, otoscopes, tongue depressors, blood-pressure cuffs, gauze, curettes, and all manner of other paraphernalia that was arrayed in another building, a short way down the hill, beneath the sacristy, which became the examination rooms for our four doctors.

Most of my time – during this past mission trip to Honduras, as in the last one we organized three years ago – was spent in what had been the sacristy but was now transformed into la farmacia.  And here, the altar had become our work-table – its planks nailed close enough together that we did not have to worry about even the smallest pills slipping down in between them to the floor, as we counted them out into little zip-lock baggies, and wrote out instructions in Spanish, guided by our interpreters.

La farmacia – the pharmacy – was somewhat insulated from the organized chaos of the church, where patients were greeted, vital signs were taken, and triage was done so we could get an idea of the overall condition, complaints, and needs of the patients.  Down the hill in the examination rooms is where the doctors were talking with, examining closely, and treating patients before sending them back up the hill with their diagnoses and prescriptions written out.  The patients then waited in the church again, while we filled prescriptions in the pharmacy, had them checked by a nurse, and sent them out with a translator and a nurse to provide instructions.  Which is to say that inside la farmacia we were also somewhat insulated from the actual human beings whom we had come to serve, since we had not been assigned to deal with the patients face-to-face.

But you must abandon any idea that the separation was meaningful between those of us in the small sacristy/pharmacy and the people we served on that hillside outside of Puerto Cortez.  Because the sacristy – la farmacia – a room of maybe 10 x 12 feet – enjoyed two large windows, covered with bars, and a metal mesh, but no glass, and a large metal door that we kept open.  The door allowed not only access down the path to the examination rooms, but also welcome ventilation during the hot, humid days.

And these three large openings to the room – two windows and one door – were almost constantly attended by children.  Faces peered in through windows watching the counting of pills as though it might suddenly turn fascinating.  And little bodies leaned on the door jambs, poked heads inside, struck up conversations, played patty-cake, asked for handouts of various sorts, and hovered constantly at the open door that led outside from la farmacia.  So our actual contact – primarily with the children from the nearby school and the surrounding neighborhood – was non-stop.  I never really saw a single patient, as such, in the clinic; but I sure did spend time with a lot of children!

The neighborhood around the church is nicknamed Colonia Episcopal.  It was largely destroyed by Hurricane Mitch in 1998 – a storm that devastated Honduras.  And the church on the hillside was left more or less a ruin afterward.  Its school was turned over to the state, and the local residents were left to rebuild their shanty-town in the haphazard way that is seen a lot throughout Honduras.  With few parishioners and damaged by the storm, the little church was eventually closed by the diocese and left to decay for several years, until a formidable woman, who happens also to be a midwife with whom we worked this past week, went to the bishop and asked him to allow them to reclaim the church and its school and to rebuild.  The bishop gave them a chance, and a bit of help in funding for a new roof for the church building, which was by then in terrible disrepair.

Today the roof keeps rain out very effectively, I can attest.  The church is painted bright yellow, and its large white cross is easily visible from the highway that leads past it into the city of Puerto Cortez.  And every day last week children cavorted on every side of the church, inside and out, and at every window and door, including those that opened into la farmacia.  I assume that our presence merely intensified the kind of cavorting that is probably a regular feature of the church of Nuestra Señora de los Desamaparados – which can be translated “Our Lady of the Dispossessed,” or “Our Lady of the Defenseless.”

Among the most striking experiences of the week 14 of us from Saint Mark’s just spent in Honduras was the experience of the church as a magnet for children, for there were children absolutely everywhere.  About two -thirds or more of all our patients were children.  But as I mentioned, the church was also surrounded by children every day – children in bare feet, covered in dirt, filthy-dirty as we sometimes say around here, too small for their ages because they are not sufficiently well nourished, their heads sometimes teeming with lice – and yet, of course, absolutely adorable in every way.  The kids played with deflated soccer balls.  They used rubber gloves given to them by our doctors as balloons.  They chased each other, played tag, and they squealed with delight when we squirted them with water from 60-cc syringes.

The remarkable thing about children is that they often do not know that they have been given heavy burdens to bear.  These children certainly showed few signs of being aware of the heavy burden of poverty that was draped over each of their shoulders, and which will weigh heavily on them all as they get older.

It is, of course, the most saccharine of clichés to point out that the future belongs to the young – to children.  Perhaps it is a disdain for the clichéd, then, that renders Episcopalians so often indifferent to children in our churches.  The idea that the church could be a magnet for children is laughable in many of our churches, outside of the South where the important place of children in the church remains an article of religion.

But on a hillside in poverty-wracked Honduras, where the church has almost nothing to work with, I know of a church that that for at least five days was an absolute magnet for children.

It is a tenet of mission work in this modern era that the missionaries will very likely bring at least as much back with them as they brought to those whom they were called to serve.  Among the many lessons I hope I have brought back with me from Honduras is the image (I pray, a lasting one) of the church as a magnet for children: a church where children want to be, where they know their concerns are foremost in the minds of the adults who surround them, where they know there is something for them, where they will be fed and cared for, and maybe even healed, where they can play and sing and be joyful, and where, without doubt, they will be safe.  Search the shelves of any pharmacy and you will discover that there is no easy prescription for this – though it is the cure the church is so dearly in need of.

We have begun, here at Saint Mark’s, to take children much more seriously, to begin to enjoy again their more numerous presence among us, and to see in them a vision of our future, unclear though that vision may yet be.

Over the doors of this church are inscribed the words from the Gospel we read today: “Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”  We don’t always hear in these words of Jesus a call to children – whose burdens are often masked by their innocence, their resiliency, and their smiles.  And, God willing, it will be the case that not all the children who come to us will be weighed down by poverty or other burdens that are heavy to bear.  But even the children of the well-to-do carry burdens with them.

By God’s blessing and mercy, may this place become a magnet for them and for all children.  May they be peering in our windows and leaning up against our doors and playing in our gardens so they can’t help but spill inside.  And may they always find rest and hope and joy here in this place.  And, by God’s grace, perhaps the little children will become the prescription for whatever ails us now, and the hope for our future.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

6 July 2014

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Welcoming A Prophet

(To listen to Mother Nora's sermon, please click here)

Here is a short list of unlikely things that people in our world seem to believe:

Many of us seem to believe that we can eat, drink, and spend much more than we should, without the consequences catching up with us.  We seem to believe that in our cities expensive real estate and expensive restaurants and expensive shops can increase forever, but the quality of our schools and our public services can only decay.  We seem to believe that changing the way we make use of our natural resources is completely impossible, even when we know that continuing on our present track is virtually guaranteed to bring suffering and destruction on a scale we are barely able to contemplate.  We seem to believe that war is human nature and peace is a luxury meant only for a lucky few.

What’s destructive is easy for us to believe.  What’s life-giving and actually sensible seems unrealistic to us. 

Maybe this inclination only to believe what’s harmful has something to do with the set of instructions Jesus gives to his disciples in this morning’s Gospel.  For Jesus’s words to them are also words to us, and they speak of a long history of being able by the grace of God to believe that in Jesus the Kingdom of God is truly near:  “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.  Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward.”

The disciples believed Jesus when he came to them.  They believed him, eventually: not without doubt, not without mistakes, not without turning back when the worst came.  In spite of their own weaknesses, they believed him.  By the grace of God, they believed him enough.  They were able to welcome the prophet who stood before them.  Somehow the evidence of his love and his truth were enough to help them stop believing only what was destructive. 

And when they had seen him resurrected and ascended and the Spirit filled them, they were able to go out into the world to tell other people.  “We have seen him,” they said.  “We have known God in him. When we were with him the Kingdom of God burst into bloom around us, and the last suddenly became the first, and the healings we had never dared to expect took place before our eyes.”  And somehow, they too were believed.  Not without struggle, not without persecution, but they were believed, just enough.  They were believed enough, and God was present with them enough, that we are still here today, gathered on a Sunday morning in Philadelphia, listening to the words that they took care to preserve, following the teachings they recorded as best we are able, each in our own way staking our lives on the faith we inherited from them.  We too believe.  We follow in a long, long tradition of people who have been able by the grace of God to welcome Jesus and those whom Jesus has sent.

How did you become part of that tradition?  How did you find yourself believing the words of Jesus enough to spend your Sunday morning here?

Have you seen that kingdom of God open up all around you?  When did it happen?  Do you talk about it much?  When and where are your eyes opened?  When is your heart opened?  In a cloud of incense?  When you hear about how someone else became a follower of Jesus?  Maybe the voices of a choir lifted in praise of God changed everything for you one Sunday morning.  Maybe every Sunday morning.  Maybe seeing the passion and commitment of the people who have kept the Saturday Soup Bowl open for ten years, in freezing cold and sweltering heat, moves you to believe.  Maybe it’s the quiet reverence of the person in the pew in front of you, actually kneeling and praying.  Maybe it’s the steady, difficult, joyful progress of the Saint James School.  The sweet faces, maybe, of the children who gather for the 9:00 Mass?  When you serve as an acolyte, are you touched by the feeling of moving and praying in unison with your fellow servers? Aren’t you kind of amazed that someone close to you is on a medical mission trip to Honduras, or has journeyed to the Philippines in the aftermath of a destructive typhoon, or to South Sudan, to extend the embrace of God’s love to those whose needs are great? 

Aren’t you amazed by the sight of your own hands stretched out to receive Communion?  Your own hand guiding the chalice carefully toward your lips, because you desire to drink from the cup of salvation?  Aren’t you more than a little amazed to find that that’s really you at the altar rail, taking the Body of Christ in your hands and drinking from the cup of his Blood?

Have you grasped the full beauty of the Holy Spirit working within you?  Because whatever brings you here this morning, something you saw or heard, some gesture or posture or voice or act, when you stirred in response to it, you were welcoming a prophet. 

Those people whose faith moved you were prophets.  They dared to proclaim the kingdom of heaven instead of the little magic kingdom of futility that we humans construct on our own.

And when you welcomed that prophet, Jesus tells us in this morning’s Gospel, you received a prophet’s reward.  Maybe we can even put it this way: when you welcomed a prophet, you yourself were being prophetic. 

You didn’t shrug your shoulders and tell yourself that the beauty of the faith you saw in action was a fantasy.  You didn’t use that moment to dig yourself deeper into the destructive hole we are all so busy digging.  You saw the kingdom of heaven and for a moment you accepted it, let it carry you forward, let it propel you to your knees, to the altar, to the world’s places of need.

You are just what this world needs, because you are moved by the Spirit that moves Jesus.  You are part of a long tradition of welcoming the truth—the beautiful, holy, life-giving truth—in a world that does not know how to believe in its own survival.

You are nothing less than prophetic when you reach out your hands and say “Amen.” It may not be easy for you.  You may not talk about it much.  You may be vaguely embarrassed when you think about the life of faith you are living.  But even in hesitation and silence, you are moved by those whom God has sent.  You believe enough for today, and by the grace of God you may come to believe ever more strongly. We may come to believe more strongly together.  This is how Jesus has chosen to build his kingdom: by opening hearts and keeping them open.  Trust what Jesus trusts.  Accept the truth of the love that brings you here.

The smallest gesture of acceptance in the Kingdom of God is enough to open the floodgates of heaven’s grace.

Preached by  Mother Nora Johnson

29 June 2014

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Corpus Christi 2014

To listen to Fr. Mullen's sermon, please click here

Just outside of Krakow, in the middle of the 14th century, a band of thieves broke into a church, pried open the tabernacle, and ran off, so the story goes, with the monstrance they found inside that happened still to contain the Blessed Sacrament of the Body of Christ.  In their flight from the scene of the crime, they discovered that the monstrance was not in fact made of gold or any other precious metal.  So they tossed it and its sacred contents into the muddy marshland as they made their escape.

On discovering the theft, the local clergy took up the chase, but as darkness fell it must have seemed that the monstrance and the Host it carried were lost to the bandits.  Until from somewhere in the marsh, a bright light began to shine through the gloomy night. 

The next morning, frightened, the priests and other locals informed the bishop of this strange light.  The bishop ordered three days of fasting and prayer.  After this period of preparation, the bishop led a procession to the marsh where eventually they located the monstrance and the Host entirely intact, from which emanated the light that enabled them to find it.  (Those were the days when bishops were bishops!)

About a hundred years later, in Dijon, a woman bought a monstrance from a second-hand dealer (as you do), both of them apparently unaware that the consecrated Bread of the Eucharist was still enclosed in the vessel.  When the woman got the monstrance home and discovered its condition, for reasons unclear to history she decided to pry the Host out with a knife.  On contact with the blade, a stream of blood began to flow from the sacred Host and dried immediately in the image of our Lord seated on a semi-circular throne, the instruments of his Passion at his side.

In Paris near the end of the 13th century, a man who “hated the Catholic faith and did not believe in the Real Presence” nefariously got himself in possession of a consecrated Host, placed it in a shallow bowl of some sort and started to stab it with a knife.  To his alarm, the Host began to bleed, filling the bowl with Blood.  “Panic-stricken, the man decided to throw the Blessed Sacrament into the fire, but the Host miraculously arose from the fire.  Desperate, he threw the Eucharist into boiling water, and the Host arose from the water, hovering in mid-air, and then taking the form of a crucifix.”  Eventually the man resorted to deliver the Host to a more pious neighbor, who sensibly brought it to her parish priest, who took custody of the Sacrament and restored equilibrium to the universe, (as we do).

Shall I go on?

Earlier in the 13th century a Saracen horde stormed the city of Assisi and the convent of San Damiano, making their way into the “very cloister of the virgins,” where the sisters “swooned in terror,” as the account goes, and called out for their mother superior, Saint Clare.  The saint emerged from her cell with a precious box containing the Blessed Sacrament.  The nuns led Saint Clare to the Saracen horde, where she dropped to the ground, prostrating herself before the Sacrament, and pleaded to the Lord in prayer to save her sisters and the entire city of Assisi.  In response to her prayer, a voice like that of a child was heard coming from the precious box: “I will always protect you,” it said.  The Saracens, no doubt impressed, turned on their heels and retreated over the very walls they had breached to storm the city.

I could go on. 

I could tell you of the woman in Zaragosa who secreted a Host away from a Mass, placed it in a little box and took it to a sorcerer for use in a love potion.  But when, on delivery to the sorcerer, the box was opened, it was shown to contain a tiny baby, shining with light.  The story only gets more fantastic from there.

Doubtful clergy are known to provoke miracles at the altar.   Like the German priest, incongruously named Peter of Prague, who, in 1263, stopped to say Mass while on his pilgrimage to Rome.  During the prayer of consecration the Host began to bleed, trickling onto his hands, and all over the altar and its linens, simultaneously dispelling his doubt and severely straining relations with the Altar Guild.[i]

I suppose these stories seem fanciful to us.  It’s no coincidence that they all spring from the medieval imagination, which tends to seem no more than quaint (at best) to us these days, and often looks much worse than that.

It is, in fact, difficult for us to imagine that the medieval imagination could be in any way superior to ours.  We know so much more than they did; we have grown so much wiser; we have let go of so much foolish superstition.  It is hard for us to find the value in these reported miracles of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist because they seem so outrageous to us; they strain belief.  And, in fact, our modern minds can find little room for the possibility that God works in such ways.

But put a more positive slant on it.  Allow for the possibility that Jesus is not done with us.  Consider that amidst the gloom of the Dark Ages, God wished for the light of his Son to be seen as often and as brightly as possible.  Remain open to the possibility that there is nothing inferior about the imagination that can see the work of God in marvelous and unexpected ways.

Whose problem is it, after all, that the expectation of our medieval ancestors to encounter the true and living God, the actual, tangible, immediate, and real Presence of Jesus in Bread and Wine of the Mass, is unmatched by our own meager expectations of this sacred rite and its simple elements?

They expected to find Jesus in all kinds of outlandish ways; but we hardly expect to find him at all – maybe not even in the Mass.  Who has the problem here?  Whose expectations are to be the more pitied?

 Here, this morning, we join with a relatively few Episcopalians in allowing ourselves to try on the medieval imagination for just a little while, and in the nicest possible way, and to see what it feels like.  We try to shed our modern inhibitions, which tell us that it is both silly and unseemly to project such wild expectations onto a disc of wheat, over which particular prayers have been mumbled by someone who, quite plainly, is not so different from you.  And let’s be clear that I’d be among the first to agree that the important work being done here is not being done by me; it’s not being done by the priest.

But I do find that the medieval costume fits, and it has a way of helping my imagination to open itself up to that now outmoded way of seeing things, and to the possibility that God is at work here, doing something powerful with the simple objects of a wafer of bread and a cup of sub-par wine.

And when I open myself up to these possibilities, I find that what I do not need – have never really needed – is for Jesus to bleed all over my hands and the altar linens.  (No, I definitely do not need that!)  But I do need to adjust my expectations.  I do need to find Jesus at work in the world: changing things, transforming things, healing things, fixing things, forgiving things, reconciling things, restoring things, reviving things.  I prefer, in fact, to live in a world of such expectations.

And if we can’t expect Jesus to display himself to us in the quite simple forms of Bread and Wine, how can we realistically expect to find him displayed in the much more complicated forms of one another – where he is also to be found, I have no doubt?

The objections to the veracity of bleeding, flying, illuminated Hosts are not without their foundations, so perhaps we need not discard those objections altogether.  But I suspect that we more urgently need a dose of medieval imagination in order to adjust our expectations, since we have come to expect so little of Jesus.

And the objections to the ritual and the feast we keep today stem from the fear that we are abusing the gift of the Sacrament and abusing one another by pretending that the Bread of the Mass is something that it is not.

Well, if it isn’t the Body of Christ then what use is it to us?  And if Christ’s promise to be with us when we “do this,” remembering him in this living way, can’t be trusted, then what is the point?

And if it is the living Lord Jesus, making himself known to us day in and day out, as if to reassure our little minds of his constancy, then what is wrong with letting our imaginations run away just a little bit today?

In 1227, in the town of Rimini, St. Anthony of Padua came across a certain man who did not believe that Christ could be truly present in the Bread and Wine of the Mass.  The man challenged Anthony to a test, saying that he would not feed his mule for three days.  Then he proposed for the two men to stand before the mule: its owner with food held out for it to eat, and the saint with the consecrated Host of the Eucharist.  “‘If the beast, leaving aside its food, hurries to adore its God, I will share the faith of your church,’” the man told Anthony.

So the mule was starved for three days.  Both men entered the piazza of the town.  Its owner held in his hands a bundle of fresh and fragrant hay.  Anthony clutched a monstrance containing the consecrated Host.  The saint called for silence as the two men stood before the animal.  And St. Anthony thus addressed the mule:

“’In virtue and in the name of your Creator, who I, unworthy as I am, hold in my hands, I tell and order you: Come forward immediately and render homage to the Lord with all due respect….’  And immediately the animal, refusing the food offered by its master; docilely approached the priest.  It bent its front legs before the Host and paused there reverently.”

And this final story of medieval imagination brings us to a good way of imagining ourselves on this Feast of Corpus Christi.  For most of us may be neither skeptic nor saint, and so we are not entirely sure who or what we are to be in the Presence of the living Lord. 

But this story makes it easy to decide: just be the mule.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

Solemnity of Corpus Christi, 2014

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

[i] Accounts of miracles and quoted material are from the website of the Real Presence Eucharistic Education and Adoration Association: www.therealpresence.org.  The miracle involving Peter of Prague in Bolsena was the event that prompted Pope Urban IV to establish the Feast of Corpus Christi by issuing a papal bull in August of 1264.