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A Maryknoll priest finds lessons in the collective lifestyle of the Mojeño-Trinitario people served by Maryknoll in the Bolivian Amazon.
When we initially began serving there years ago as a temporary commitment we realized that the experience would be good for seminarians and brother candidates during their Overseas Training Program (OTP), as well as for prospects in the discernment program with the Maryknoll Society, lay missioners and other young people.
Undertaking this pastoral ministry commitment at Santísima Trinidad parish as a team involves learning to discuss different situations, planning and reevaluating how to make decisions. We even discuss how we will make prospective members feel like they are also leaders and not just taking over what others have already done.
“Life is a communal journey where tasks and responsibilities are apportioned and shared on the basis of the common good,” Pope Francis wrote in his apostolic exhortation Querida Amazonia (QA 20). “There is no room for the notion of an individual detached from the community or from the land.”
Traditionally, the Maryknoll mission methodology was to send missioners to the most remote peripheries in need. Missioners often lived and worked in distant places where they ran parishes or pastoral projects. Periodic meetings would be held, but each missioner assumed the responsibilities at their own site. Little by little, we began developing a more collective way of working together in mission, but for us, this is still new.
The challenge of running Santísima Trinidad parish is for us a gift from the Holy Spirit. Working with the Mojeño-Trinitario Indigenous community, we realized it was an opportunity to learn more about synodality from them.
Indigenous communities have a collective spirituality, mentality and organization. They integrate religious and social organization into the mysticism and philosophy of their ethnic group. In the Santísima Trinidad parish, there are two leadership structures: the cabildo or council (the core of social leadership) and the catechists (representatives of religious leadership).
All topics are discussed and decided on as a community, as well as the organization and preparation of religious activities. Although there is a corregidor (a local administrator in social matters) and a senior catechist (for religious matters), decisions are made as a team after consulting with the whole community. It’s wonderful to see that the community feels ownership of what is being done and the people feel like leaders, not merely spectators or participants.
Don Avelino, the senior catechist, has led the community for many years, along with six other men from the community and a group of women called beatas. Each of the men has responsibilities that they alternate: bell ringing, cleaning, preparing the altar and giving catechesis for the sacraments. The women are responsible for praying for the community’s needs and decorating the altar, among other things.
“For important holy days, we accompany the liturgy with traditions from our people that represent Bible passages related to each feast,” don Avelino says. This involves dances, rituals, songs in their language, meals and offerings of the products they grow and harvest.
We missioners have been learning about the Mojeño-Trinitario culture and spirituality and consulting the people for ideas and activities to promote. These men and women have kept the community’s faith for decades, especially during the years when there were no priests or religious in the area. They take care of Sunday celebrations, accompany funerary services for the deceased, prepare for baptism or marriage, and serve as spiritual guides for those in need of advice. They may not be academic theologians, but they are theologians of life, because they interpret everything through their perspective of faith.
In Querida Amazonia, Pope Francis emphasized the fundamental role of the Indigenous people of the Amazon. “Their words, their hopes and their fears should be the most authoritative voice at any table of dialogue on the Amazon region. And the great question is: ‘What is their idea of “good living” for themselves and for those who will come after them?’” (QA 26).
Featured image: Children from the TIPNIS Indigenous community in the Bolivian Amazon sing joyfully during a Mass in the church of Santísima Trinidad, where Maryknoll missioners have served for several years and have recently been given pastoral responsibility for the parish.
