Banica Mission Work
Summary of a Fr. Gerry Creedon homily from August 19, 2007
"I have come to set the earth on fire and how I wish it were already blazing." Luke 12:49
At the age of 24 I left Ireland and landed at Blessed Sacrament for my first assignment. In my first seven years in the USA under Msgr Quinn’s watchful eye, I came to admire the way this community embraced the renewal of the church after Vatican 2; the enthusiasm for the liturgy in the vernacular and later in Spanish, and the engagement of the laity in the work of catechesis. Over twenty years later I left the luxuries of middle class life in Mt Vernon for an assignment in the Dominican Republic, where I helped found our Diocesan Mission along the frontier with Haiti, in Banica and Pedro Santana.
There I found 20,000 subsistence farmers, campesinos who had an income of about a dollar a day, without basic necessities; no asphalt road, children suffering malnutrition, no drinking water unless it was boiled, little electricity, houses poorly thatched with holes in many a roof and without a resident priest in twenty years. However they were a people of great love and faith. No tenemos pesetas, pero tenemos calor humano.
Because they had few roads, the church was served by neighborhood communities, with lay leaders or animators. They had a weekly celebration of the word. The priest visited by truck, mule, or on foot an average of once a month. Sometimes it took 14 hours to reach the far away hills or lomas.
Our mission has made great strides. A milk and food program insures that no children die of hunger. Wells have been dug that yield potable water in neighborhoods where they used to send out their children on burros two hours to bring back gallons of contaminated water from the river. The church has successfully advocated with the government to pave the main road. Bishop Grullon has bought a bulldozer; the mission provides the fuel, and goat paths have been turned into roads where pregnant women can be brought to the hospital in time for help, and where produce can be brought to market. Houses have been roofed and built. Health services have been offered and surgery made available. All of this has been accomplished by the leadership of our priests and lay volunteers, empowering local leadership. A Catholic school has been built to supplement the poorly staffed public system and a community center provides training and education.
The church promotes life and faith. The gospel cannot be preached unless it is accompanied by the work of justice and hope. The faith has grown. Seminaries are filling up. Pedro, a teenage community leader in my time has been ordained to priesthood last month. And the Sacraments are celebrated with a faith that inspires the people with new life.
In Banica a thousand dollars will build a house. 500 dollars will pay for a seminarian. 200 dollars will provide a scholarship or a course of insulin for a child, 50 dollars will feed a family for a week.
Coming back to Blessed Sacrament, I remember this parish as a place of compassion, reaching out to the poor and the needy with Alive. Your pastor, Fr. Cregan is the first to provide support to the sick and the housebound. I know that you will extend the same compassion to people you will never see in the Dominican Republic.
I remember a campesino in Banica who lost his leg to gangrene and needed a prosthesis. Msgr. Burke, a priest of our diocese was on a trip to Ireland. He was a passenger in car that had a collision and lost his leg. When he died, his prosthesis was sent to Banica and Wison Jean was fitted with it.
I do not ask you to imitate Msgr. Burke. I do not ask for life or limb, but I do ask you to be generous. No gift is too large. No gift is too small when we share the fire of love, and the flame of faith.
