The Church in Juarez

by Ben Lager

We arrived in the border town of El Paso, Texas June 8, 2006 on a hot Friday afternoon.  The sun and cement made the downtown bus station feel like an oven.  I looked over at the bridge one block away that would take us into Juarez.  We had come to build two houses for two families who lived in ramshackle casas de cartas (cardboard houses).  It would take a week for us to build these two houses, and my group of 30 people (including our parish priest) would suffer each day in the terrible heat, sweating and working laying block and mortar.  Although we physically built the house for two homeless families, it really felt like we were the strangers, and these warm Mexicans were welcoming us home.  They gave us lodging, they cooked all our meals, they kept us safe, they made sure we had what we needed during the day.  In short, they did what Christ called all of us to do in Matthew 25:35:  “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”

As we built our two houses, the children watched from the side.  The father of one of the families was off working somewhere in the city, and mom and the four kids watched us shyly as we worked.  The oldest boy had a withered arm and some kind of brain injury.  He couldn’t speak, and the younger children watched out for him and took care of him.   We could sense the excitement in all of their faces as they watched this house take shape.  They helped us with the important tasks of fetching tools, bringing us water, and giving us words of encouragement in Spanish that only a few of us could understand.

I looked across from the dry mountain side on which we were building to the other side of the Rio Grande.  I could see the sparkling buildings of glass, the busy interstate, the wide streets and large houses, the bustle of a booming economy that stood in such stark contrast to the dusty slum in which we presently labored.  But I could also see that these Juareznians were rich too—rich in community, sustained by the deep, abiding faith that each day they were in the hands of God who would deliver them each day and work miracles for them each day.  In the slums of Juarez, there are no secular thoughts and accidental, random beginnings to anything.  The grace of God is in everything that happens each day, and our little group was the miracle of that day.

At one point some of the neighborhood kids came by and invited us to join them in a friendly game of soccer.  Ha!  We blithely went down to the playground, lambs to the slaughter, while the world’s best soccer players plotted our demise.  We lasted about an hour before we begged for mercy and retreated to our safehouse, with its warm showers and television, to lick our wounds and assure each other that, after all, they had the home-court advantage.

We continued to work on building the walls, installing the windows, forming the cement crown that would tie everything together, and finally, on the 5th day, we put on the roof.  On the last day we incorporated the handing over the keys to the houses into a short liturgy.  We sang songs and placed at the feet of the two families the gifts we had brought—the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, a Bible, a crucifix.  We also gave food staples—oil, flour, sugar; toys for the children, and hugs to embrace those who would never be the same (that was us).  The love between our two groups was palpable, and tears flowed from everyone.  I felt in that particular moment, as I looked in the eyes of the smiling boy with the withered hand and wordless lips, the very eyes of Christ looking back at me.  I felt such a warmth in my heart that all the painful days of work, sore muscles and thirst were forgotten.

When we all came together, at the end, to pray and ask God’s blessing on the houses, I looked around at these gentle new friends and I heard Jesus say “This is My Body.”  And when I read, that night, of the terrible violence and gang murders over the weekend in Juarez I heard Jesus say “And this is My Blood.”

We went back to the place where we were staying and had our own last supper.  Most of us were anxious to return home to our families and lives we had left behind.  Some of us really did not want to leave at all.  We gathered our things in the morning and left for the border.  It would be a two-hour wait to get through the long lines of people trying to cross over into the United States.  As we were waiting, a man selling papers said to us in Spanish as we were passing by, “Bien gente!”   “Good people.”  What a wonderful thing to say and hear.  We crossed over into the United States, and the return to our own culture seemed to be more of a shock than going in the slums of Juarez.  Everyone was busy, going fast, with very little time.  I looked back at the border and the fence, and I reflected that there would be no walls in the kingdom of God.  In fact, our two little houses that we built had already brought down the wall between us just a bit.

These days I never receive Eucharist at home without remembering the Body of Christ in Juarez.  “Come back next year,” said Maria Lopez to me as we packed up our car for our trip back to Denver.  “When you are here with us you are home.”

I don’t know why exactly, but in the depths of my being I know she is right.

Published in Chicken Soup for the Soul: Living Catholic Faith © 2008