What I Saw in Mexico

My vacation in Southern Mexico from St. John Vianney Day (August 4) until Assumption Day (August 15) with my friend, Fr. Bob Lacey, was immensely fun and generally pretty relaxing. Going with Fr. Lacey was great for a variety of reasons including his perceptive insight. Here are a few things that we saw in Mexico.

1. People there are very young. Wikipedia reports that the average age there is 25, whereas the average age of an American is about 40. There are lots of children everywhere. The youthfulness there is beautiful.

2. There is construction work going on all over Mexico. People are working and building, and unemployment is very low (3.2%, give or take). It was more expensive to be in Mexico than it had been on previous visits, which means that their economy is not as weak compared to ours as it used to be. The vibrancy and energy there is beautiful.

3. Despite ongoing trends of secularization, religion is not dead in Mexico. Our Lady of Guadalupe is everywhere. She dangles from rearview mirrors, reposes in bus station shrines, and has special places of honor in most homes. Whereas in Montreal, St. Joseph's Oratory seemed bereft of local visitors, the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe was swarming with Mexican pilgrims. Crucifixes are also prominent in the country. Generally, and especially in churches, their crucifixes are not for sissies or the faint of heart. Our Lord is depicted as suffering upon the Cross, writhing with wounds and soaked in blood. Each is like a still-frame shot of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. They very much want to remember, meditate upon, and soak up our Lord's suffering. Tellingly, a priest indicated that prayer groups have been springing up everywhere in the wake of the decision of the capital city's legislature to legalize abortion within city limits. The devotion there is beautiful.

4. In my experiences, things have been getting steadily more efficient in Mexico. Even with the efficiency, there is still a real warmth and humanity in Mexico, even while waiting in line at government offices. There is also a sense that not everything has to happen right now. This awareness helps them to be patient - incredibly patient, I suspect. Every single time I've been to Mexico, I've been invited for dinner to the home of a total- or near-total stranger. The family that had me over for dinner also drove me to the airport the next day. Their hospitality is astounding. The humanity there is beautiful.

5. As Fr. Lacey and I prepared to leave the Cathedral of Mexico City, several bishops, numerous priests, and dozens of seminarians processed in. Taking their seats in the choir, they chanted first vespers for the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Everything stopped. The tourists, idle wanderers, ushers - everyone stopped and listened as those well-trained voices chanted those ancient prayers in that most ancient and lavish cathedral in the Americas. All the noise and hubbub of Mexico City's thirty million residents was drowned out by sung prayers ascending to heaven. Time simply fell away as businesswomen, father-and-son tour pilgrimages, and scruffy and awestruck tourists stood captivated for forty five minutes. The beauty there is beautiful.

Our countries are divided from each other by a lot of "political concerns" (that really means "by politicians"). But there is an immense amount of beauty and good in their country and in ours. Beauty is the manifestation of goodness to our senses. It is what makes the good not only known as desirable, but felt as desirable. Beauty is what attracts us to goodness, and ultimately to God, the Ultimate Good (if we do not take a wrong turn). Dostoyevsky once wrote that "Beauty will save the world." We should pray that by whatever means, God draws our two countries closer together in a way that draws each closer to Himself.