our common journey: all are refugees

Epiphany, when we remember the wise men who knelt before the Son of God to pay Him homage, will always be a personal favorite.

On January 5, Epiphany’s eve -- exactly 59 years ago, my parents, my brother and I left our home town of Pinar del Río for the capital city of Habana. There, our family of four boarded a plane toward an unknown, mysterious and invisible future, becoming refugees in a new land. 

On that day, like the wise men who followed only the star, my parents chose to do the inconceivable, to leave the only place we had ever known, with nothing but our faith and hope in God's promises. I was 17 months old, the youngest of María de Jesús and Ignacio's children.

My official passport photo for leaving Cuba

When I look at my granddaughter now, roughly the same age I was when I walked out on that tarmac, I am blown away by the truth that certain life-altering experiences - like becoming a refugee - are etched deeply in our souls, shaping who we are. These moments may not live in my conscious memories, but they changed me forever. Emotions transcend memory.

My parent's anxiety, fear, determination as they walked us from airport official to official, clinging to each other and to each of us. The cruelty of the officer at the airport who ripped a doll from my arms. The passengers’ tension after hours of waiting on the runway, fearful that someone else would be taken off the plane. And the peace that surpasses understanding, as my father, who was aptly named after the brave Ignatius of Loyola, quietly began to recite, 

"El Señor es mi pastor, nada me falta... the Lord is my Shepherd, there is nothing I shall want."

The events that led to my parent's decision to risk everything and leave family and home evolved quickly. Fidel Castro had closed the churches and the Catholic schools where both my parents worked. And he had collected religious men, women, priests, brothers, sisters, whom my parents considered friends, family and mentors, and literally shipped them off the island on a boat, destination unknown.

My own dad had been picked up on his way home one day and taken to the local jail for interrogation, accused of speaking out in the local Catholic newspaper, condemning how the Church and its people were being treated. Providentially, in the chaos of an evolving, disorganized revolution, my father was miraculously let go in the middle of the night and sent home.

 

Not long after the wise men venerated baby Jesus, Scripture tells us that an angel came to Joseph and told him to leave everything behind and take Mary and the baby to a foreign land—refugees, like me.

My parents' courage and faith is genuinely a parable, much like the parables Jesus used to proclaim Truth to His disciples, and now to us.

 

Surely with much fear and trepidation, they chose to believe in the promise we pray every morning in the Canticle of Zechariah:

This was the oath he swore to our father [Ignacio]:
to set us free from the hands of our enemies,
free to worship him without fear,
holy and righteous in his sight
all the days of our life.

Although there are many in the world who will, most of us will not be faced by such stark choices this coming year. But a pandemic has made us experience profound emotions: fear and anxiety; exiled from our normal, refugees separated from family, work, and everything familiar. We are still struggling with abandonment, isolation, distress, letting go of the known for something new and incomprehensible.

 

There really is only one choice before us, choose Life. Follow the star. Believe in the promise, the oath, God made with each of us.

                                                                 +     +     +

[NOTE: I am excited to begin a new journey this month as columnist for Liguorian Magazine's regular column, "Just live it"!  Clickhere for the printed, edited version of this column, y ¡feliz día de los tres Santos Reyes! ✨

 

the Journey of the Magi, a poem

The Journey Of The Magi 

'A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sorefooted, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
and running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly. 

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kiking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arriving at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you might say) satisfactory. 

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death. 

~T. S. Eliot

los tres Santos Reyes

I grew up in Puerto Rico, where everyone celebrates los tres Reyes--today's feast of the Epiphany.

On the eve of the día de los Reyes, my brother and I would fill a shoe box with grass and a container with water and set it under the Christmas tree for the camels that would bring the Magi to our home that night. In the morning, the grass and water were gone, and in their place we would have gifts, just as the Magi brought gifts to Jesus in Bethlehem.

In Hispanic countries throughout the world, in fact, January 6 is the day that children receive their Christmas gifts, in commemoration of the Magi's visit.

In our own blended family (Cuban and Texan!), Michael and I seriously considered making January 6 our family's sole day for receiving gifts. Ultimately we opted to join in the Santa tradition of December 25, and in addition, to pass on the Puerto Rican style Epiphany celebration--with shoe box and grass, gifts, a special Epiphany meal, and of course, the traditional song de los tres Santos Reyes:

Tuna estudiantina de Cayey singing

 los tres Santos Reyes

(see lyrics below)

Los tres Santos Reyes, los tres y los tres, 
los tres Santos Reyes, los tres y los tres,
Los saludaremos con divina fe,
los saludaremos con divina fe.

Los tres santos Reyes, yo los sé contar,
Los tres santos Reyes, yo los sé contar,
Gaspar y Melchor y el Rey Baltazar.
Gaspar y Melchor y el Rey Baltazar.

Llegan con cautela, la Estrella los guía
Llegan con cautela, la Estrella los guía
se sientes sus pasos, en la noche fría
se sientes sus pasos, en la noche fría

Señores, adiós . . . doy la despedida
al corazón santo, dulce de María
Señores, adiós . . . doy la despedida
al corazón santo, dulce de María

Señores adiós porque ya nos vamos
Señores adiós porque ya nos vamos
todos los presentes pasen feliz año
todos los presentes pasen feliz año 

the new Normal

I feel like I've entered Ordinary Time early this year. 

In our liturgical tradition, the first period of Ordinary Time won't begin until after the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, which is the Sunday after Epiphany--or January 13 this year. 

Because our family, like our Church, celebrates Christmas all the way through Epiphany, I still have all our Christmas decorations up. The lights still shine. The nativities are featured in every room of our home. And this Sunday, as they have every year on their feast, los Tres Reyes will leave gifts at our house for the family.

But in spite of all this, I feel a change, a shift, that has already taken place within me and around me. I'm not feeling worried, or depressed. I've thought about it, and it's not post holiday blues.  

My "normal" life and schedule is characteristically unpredictable, so it's not that I need to go back to a regular routine to get back to normal. It's more an awareness that what is normal in my life has changed.

In the past seven months, our family has celebrated two weddings and one Masters' graduation. We have welcomed and, as of last week, baptized twin grand-babies. And two of our daughters have unexpectedly moved back to Norman, Oklahoma, because of work. Clearly, all of these changes are wonderful and exciting, and my heart is overwhelmed with thanksgiving! 

Maybe that's exactly why I feel a need for Ordinary Time, my heart is, indeed, overwhelmed--and it needs time and space to breathe deep again.

__ __ __ __ __ 

"Don't overlook the wonder of the ordinary" ~Anonymous