Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 4, 2022
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Corner of Mission & Parkview, San Antonio
You turn man back to dust. For a thousand years in your sight are as a watch in the night.
And it doesn’t matter if you’re a baby, or six, or forty, or seventy-two like Margaret and me. We will turn back to dust. I don’t want to dwell on it, but it’s true. At the Mission Espada south of San Antonio, each window holds a canister of dust, and beside each canister of dust is this verse, in several languages:
From dust you came, and to dust you will return.
But like I said, I don’t want to dwell on it. Life goes on, until it doesn’t. Outside the mission is a beautiful tree, horizontal and mostly dead, surely a live oak. Margaret and I sat on the tree, pondered the ancient ruins of the mission, and how our own lives unfolded day by day by day.
That was ten years ago.
Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain wisdom of heart. Return, O Lord! How long?
The mission? In 1690, it was built in Caddo country in what is now northeast Texas, near Nacogdoches, and named the Mission of San Francisco de los Tejas (“Mission of St. Francis to our Friends”). Tejas is the Spanish spelling of a Caddo word taysha, which means “friend.” In the 17th century the Spanish knew the westernmost Caddo peoples as “the great kingdom of Tejas” and the name lived on to become the name of the 28th state of the United States – Texas.
When the mission, with its soldiers and friars, moved 40 years later, its new site became the center of an agricultural and spiritual community. The Indians built an aqueduct and then birthed four more missions a few miles apart.
Mission San Antonio de Valero was the furthest north. Soldiers stationed at this fort were from the Mexican town of Alamo de Parras, and after Mexico declared their independence from Spain in 1821, the soldiers named their new home the Alamo. And then of course in 1836 the Alamo became the final resting place for many Texian heroes. So much history, so little time.
Since 1690, twenty-two generations of men, women and children have come and gone. As the song goes, “I am one of them, and so are you, so let’s just praise the Lord.” Father Abraham had many sons. We are born, we live, we die. So much beauty, and we can choose to receive it every day, or not.
Fill us at daybreak with your kindness, that we may shout for joy and gladness all our days. Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us, for as many years as we have seen trouble.
Toward the end of March 12, when we explored the missions of San Antonio, we stopped at a convenient store at the corner of Mission and Parkview. A newly painted mural graced the back of this BestMart. What a celebration the mural was. A Mexican boy bathed in a galvanized tub, two older Mexicans played their guitar and accordion, and a young boy led his mother and grandmother toward the ice cream man. “Helados, 5 cents”.
Bluebonnets blanketed the ground from one side of the mural to the other. Two men turned meat on their barbeque, and behind them men and women danced. Kids played a game in the magnolia trees in front of one of two churches. Festooned with red roses and fire, Our Lady of Guadalupe prayed for everyone.
On the west side of the mural great large chickens with their chicks, led by their rooster, moved toward the people. A silent woman, turned away from everyone, pinned her laundry on the line. And in front, outside the mural, five concrete parking blocks marked the asphalt lot.
Which of you wishing to construct a tower does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if there is enough for its completion? Otherwise, after laying the foundation and finding himself unable to finish the work the onlookers should laugh at him and say, “This one began to build but did not have the resources to finish.”
Jesus the Christ, present with Yahweh at the creation of the world, now lived in a world measured by time and bordered by birth and death. We live there too. In the years between, days spin by and our bodies wear out. Everything wears out. We need God’s presence and sustenance more every day.
And the mural, it too needs rejuvenation. Ten years later, this most active, life-giving story of celebration on the back of a convenient store is fading away. Seeing that monstrous act of carelessness brought tears to my eyes yesterday. Take a look for yourself.
Oh, Lord, how we need you!
May the favor of the Lord rest on us; establish the work of our hands for us – yes, establish the work of our hands.
(Wisdom 9, Psalm 90, Philemon, Psalm 119, Luke 14)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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