January 18, 2010
Second Sunday in Ordinary Time
Dear Friends,
At Mass this Sunday—just five days after the tragic earthquake in Haiti— we heard in the first reading the prophet Isaiah refer to the people of Israel as espoused and their land as my delight. After the exile from their homes, this was undoubtedly a welcomed relief from their prior names of forsaken and desolate.
I cannot help but think how these words apply to the people of Haiti. With their land that is more than ninety percent deforested and a starvation-causing poverty (eighty percent unemployment), desolate and forsaken appear appropriate, and this was even before the earthquake! Yet, I wonder if
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our God of Mercy is calling on us, especially in the first world, to extend a hand—as if in marriage—to help them heal, drink clean water, eat a nutritious meal, and even rebuild. If God wants them to be known as espoused, some of us must help!
I had the opportunity to visit Haiti last week, returning to the U.S. four days before the earthquake. I was there visiting Fr. Tom Hagan, OSFS, an Oblate missionary who founded the Hands Together mission in 1986. He has lived and worked in Haiti for 15 years, and his mission has founded schools, developed water systems, and built feeding centers, including Port au Prince. What’s more, he has brought hope to countless people living in dire poverty.
I rejoice that he survived the earthquake. However, two of our seminarians living in the mission house where I stayed did not. Please pray for them and the thousands of others who have died.
I ask you to help Fr. Tom and his people. He reports that water, food and medical supplies are most needed. I am grateful that he is able to provide these directly to the people who are suffering because he is there with them. All donations that we Oblates of St. Francis de Sales receive for Haiti will be sent to Fr. Tom for his mission. If you are interested in helping, you may send your donation,
payable to “Oblates of St. Francis de Sales at 2200 Kentmere Parkway, Wilmington, DE, 19806.” Or, you may want to donate on-line by
clicking here.
I hope that you are able to join me—and so many of our friends—in helping Haiti in its time of need.
Gratefully,
Very Reverend James J. Greenfield, OSFS
Provincial
PS: The pictures atop and beneath this letter are, respectively, Fr. Tom with a young boy at one of the schools Hands Together has built and a group of Haitian youth in Cite Soleil, the slum neighborhood in Port au Prince, that was tremendously hit by the earthquake.
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