First, there is no such thing as Easter. There is no word for it. If you want to describe that particular Sunday you can say Resurrection Sunday, but it's not a special day and you'd better specify Sunday because most people don't know exactly what day He rose again. Here they celebrate Holy Week. That means that most people are off work and nobody goes to school (like spring break) so basically you have a lot of men sitting around with nothing better to do than drink.
There are special activities sponsored by the Catholic church during this time. On Monday, if they didn't do it the week before, the deaconess or priest goes around from house to house asking for money and in return will give a blessing. One day they take the idols/statues out of the Catholic church and parade them around town. This is usually on Friday, but varies with the schedule of the person who has the key. If that person is in one of the other villages they work in, it could be any day.
One extra special activity is the burning of Judas. About a week before Holy week, a man will appear tied to a tree. He is usually made of sticks and decorated with various items. Last year he had cowboy boots and a six shooter on his hip. This year he had a baseball cap and an empty bottle of whisky. He also has a piece of paper stapled to his chest that says, "Judas."
Also dependent on scheduling, the town gets together and lights this man on fire. It doesn't necessarily have to be after the crucifixion parade on Friday. This year in Santa Rita they did it on Tuesday. It is a big event, although nobody really knows why they are doing it.
After Friday with the big parade of Jesus on the cross, the partying stops. Saturday is quiet except for the drinking and Sunday everything returns to normal as people try to sober up or binge one last time before going back to work.
My saddest observation in all of this is that they are missing the Hope. Without the resurrection there is no hope. Everybody dies, but only one person was raised from the dead with the power to carry away all of our sins.
We're here to bring hope. And you can do that any day of the week.
"First, there is no such thing as Easter."
ReplyDeleteIt's called 'Pascua' from the Greek 'Paschal'.
"if they didn't do it the week before, the deaconess or priest "
There is no such thing as a 'deaconess' in the Catholic Church since only men can be deacons.
"One day they take the idols/statues out of the Catholic church "
Idols? Your roots are showing!
Hey Mark,
ReplyDeleteI thought I'd get a comment from you. Pascua is the word for passover and less people know what that means than resurrection day. Also, if you go to the catholic church in New Horizon on the third Friday of any given month, you will find the lady who calls herself a deaconess teaching catechism. There are female "catequistas" as well, but this lady is special and comes from outside the village. There are not enough people interested for the priest to come anymore, so they send this lady, who apparently is not chaste enough to be a nun.
I could change the word idol to graven image if it makes you feel better :) ...but the people here do pray specifically to that item, whatever your label.
I realize that the Catholicism you know is very different from the twisted jungle catholicism we have here. Maybe you should be a Catholic missionary to come straighten them all out?
My advice is for you to get some books on Mayan culture. I know you mean well but in your neighborhood some cultural mistakes can get you killed. The post about the roofing material was a real eye opener for me as to how little you understand about the way things are done in your area. Get some books, read them and you will better understand the wild Mayas that you come in contact with in your calling.
ReplyDelete"Pascua is the word for passover and less people know what that means than resurrection day."
ReplyDeleteJimmy, your Spanish is better than mine but at Mass in the capital on Sunday everyone was wishing me 'Feliz Pascuas' and I would be surprised if all those educated capitalinos were telling me to have a good passover.
"Also, if you go to the catholic church in New Horizon on the third Friday of any given month, you will find the lady who calls herself a deaconess teaching catechism. "
I guess things ARE different. We Catholics take pride in knowing how to keep our women in their place, viz., veiled and quiet in church.
"I could change the word idol to graven image if it makes you feel better :) ...but the people here do pray specifically to that item, whatever your label."
I'm still going to take issue with your choice of words here though. An idol is something which is worshiped. Praying to a Saint to intercede for them isn't the same as worship. I suspect you wouldn't be opposed to my praying for you, and yet I'm a depraved sinner here on earth, so what could possibly be wrong with asking someone already in heaven to pray for you?
"Maybe you should be a Catholic missionary to come straighten them all out?"
I'll keep that in mind but I suspect I would be even less well received than you are. :-)
Norm, In New Horizon there are some "wild maya" or Kekchi for our neck of the woods, but they are our friends. The problems there stem from the ex-guerrillas who actually discriminate against the Kekchi and would like to think of themselves as ladinos. I don't think that anybody has written a book yet about their culture, unless you count Menchu's made up version or one of Che's autobiographies by Castro. These people, while wild, consider themselves to be educated, rational people. About 1/4 of the men are Colom's personal bodyguards and he is not in the habit of trusting "wild mayans."
ReplyDeleteI would be very open and interested to hear your point of view on how things are done or supposed to be done in this area. My problem is that books on Mayan culture are severely skewed towards the world-view of the author, thus clouding the facts with personal opinion and interpretation. I count among my advisors and friends several gringos who were born or grew up here since very young. They understand both cultures and have lots of advice. for the newbie.
The word Pascua in the Bible always means passover. The word first appears in Exodus 12 in a variety of Spanish versions. I could see where some people with no knowledge of the rest of the Bible could have read Matthew 26, Mark 14, Luke 22 or John 18-19 when reading about the Last Supper and assume the Bible was talking about Easter. Maybe that happened a long time ago and people stuck with it out of tradition. In your defence, my Spanish/English Dictionary defines Pascua as "Passover, Christmas, Easter." I don't think that clears it up, but merely shows how it is used by some people, however ignorant of the facts.
ReplyDeleteWe were in a Mennonite church (talk about controlling your women...) Sunday morning where a guest pastor from the States was preaching. The Mennonite pastor (he was born here in our town, but his parents are from Canada) did not have a word for Easter when translating the guy's message, and several times said simply, "Día de la Resurrección."
I asked several people yesterday about this because I was open to the possibility that I was wrong (it doesn't happen often, but it does happen). My question was, "Do you know what Pascua means or is?" I said it this way so as to not have any bias and make it appear that I had just encountered a difficult word. I asked a Kekchi pastor (who doesn't speak very much Spanish but I thought he'd know an Easter word), a teen who was recently saved in one of our Bible Studies, a random lady at the gas station who said she was Catholic, the guy pumping my gas who said he was Evangelico, and a lady in one of our villages who isn't anything and I doubt has read any of the Bible. The only one who even ventured a guess was the guy pumping my gas who said it was a party for Jesus. The rest hadn't heard the word before or wouldn't embarrass themselves by trying to explain it to me. When I asked what kind of party or what day it was, he didn't have an answer.
I won't get started on female pastors in Evangelical churches... I do agree that your flavor of Catholicism, although supposed to be "Universal" is very different from what you will find in most parts of Guatemala. Our version here is even very different from what you would find in Guate. If they were the same Catholics as what I grew up with in the States, they would be easier to convert :). That is why we came to Petén though. There is vast ignorance about what the Bible really says. At least in our Kekchi villages there isn't even a Catholic church to worry about.
As far as idols, again I think this is your personal view and not representative of the majority, especially the Guatemalan majority. I recently spoke with a guy in an Evangelical church who was wearing his crucifix. He said that he wore it because it protected him. The people here pray to specific saints so that that specific saint will help them with direct intervention, not intercede on their behalf.
Also, why pray to dead people when you can go straight to the source? I don't think dead Paul or Jerome or Assisi are concerned about me right now, but I know somebody who is. Fellow believers who are alive can be directly concerned and can listen to me in order to intercede directly on my behalf.
At this point you cannot be less well received than we are. I think the next step is stoning...
They may think of themselves as people who have become Latin but they were brought up in the old traditions where the rule of civil law is not to be trusted and a wrong is taken care of in a personal way. That guy considered that roofing his when it was put on his building, right or wrong he thought you ripped him off when you removed it to use on your new church. Wild Maya are people who lived through the civil war and still are willing to settle things outside the law. These are people who saw the Army come into their villages with a backhoe on a flatbed trailer and it was not for putting in a sewer system. You can read up a bit or take your chances that they consider you harmless but my advice is to read everything you can find on your area's history, politics,economic systems and cultural practices.
ReplyDeleteI appreciate your concern and can assure you that I have read quite extensively about this area, as well as had long personal conversations with people from both sides. It was my feeling that culturally, in this town, it would be worse to allow myself to be knowingly taken advantage of in the long-term, than the easy, safe short term route of leaving everything there. My goal is to one day be allowed back into the village, but the people there have no respect for somebody who lets himself be walked over. This was back up by one of my friends who lives in this village as well. If I had just let him take everything with no consequences, although I would have had a fine relationship with this one man, I would not have had the chance to seriously work with everybody else someday. You probably know how people like to talk when somebody knowingly pays too much for something; they are immediately targeted for further scams and seen as a baboso with too much money. I did not let this happen and although that family might be upset, everybody else there (aside from el Loco) agrees with what I did in this instance. What they do not add up is I spent $10,000 to only get back $2,000 worth of stuff that I really don't have any use for.
ReplyDeleteThese are also people who burnt villages to the ground, recruited by stealing from people while promising them great riches for their sacrifice, murdered people without cause and are even today molesting and raping their own children. I know this and therefore do not take things lightly.
In our Kekchi villages people will build their own churches with a chainsaw and poached wood and we won't have to worry about this problem. Thankfully this was a one time thing.
"The word Pascua in the Bible always means passover. "
ReplyDeleteIn the OT the use is a prefiguration of the sacrifice, viz., Christ as the paschal lamb. The unblemished lamb to be sacrificed, the salvific blood of the lamb, etc. I'll venture, without referencing my theological books locked away in AZ, that the traditional use of Paschal in the Latin, the only use I'm familiar with, is a reference to the Paschal Lamb which is tied to Easter by virtue of the resurrection. I'm skeptical that in countries with a Catholic tradition pascua is intended as a reference to the Jewish observance of passover which was replaced by the observation of the Tridium. The former has not been observed by new covenant believers in 2,000 years while the latter has been the common practice in eastern and western Christianity for more than a millenium (although I must plead ignorance as to the rituals of the anabaptists).
All that having been said, I don't doubt your survey results. My own results, far more limited, have confirmed that evangelicos believe it to mean 'passover' and the Catholics claim it references Easter, hence, Feliz Pascuas on Sunday.
"I do agree that your flavor of Catholicism, although supposed to be "Universal" is very different from what you will find in most parts of Guatemala."
Yeah, we've had a little breakdown in discipline in recent generations. It happened in the 15th century too. :-( It was foretold (Apoc 3:16)
"As far as idols, again I think this is your personal view and not representative of the majority, especially the Guatemalan majority"
Argumentum ad populum; I can assure you it is not my personal view but that taught by the Church. You have my permission to straighten out the poorly catechized, like a latter day King Hezekiah (2 Kgs. 18:4)
"Also, why pray to dead people when you can go straight to the source? "
For the same reasons my children often approach their mother and ask that she intercede on their behalf with me. There is precedent, after all (John 2, 1-11), and if intercessory prayers are of no value, why bother asking *anyone* else to pray? If we should only go straight to the source, why would some other sinner's prayers ever be necessary?
But we both know that argument is fallacious, for intercession is encouraged (Rom. 15:30–32, Eph. 6:18–20, Col. 4:3, 1 Thess. 5:25, 2 Thess. 3:1), the difference is you are asserting it is only appropriate for sinners to pray for us while I'm alleging Saints are capable of it as well (Ps. 103:20-2, Ps. 148:1-2, and the prayers of the Saints in heaven Rev. 8:3-4 and 5:8.)