All Saints Day is the celebration of all the saints, known and unknown, who have gone before us. In protestant churches it is not much remembered other than the very loosely connected Halloween night on the Eve of All Hallows Day (another name for All Saints / All Souls day). It is further obscured by the remembrance of Reformation Day coinciding with the celebration.
As the wheels hit the ground that Sunday morning my mind was bleary, foggy from a red-eye flight, I was excited to be joining with my friends, teachers and colleagues, from around the world. Little did I know that the significance of our gathering being on week of All Saints Day would only grow as the days went on.
After a day of the conference being contained within the walls of the hotel we ventured out into the city. The first stop was the Guatemala National Cemetery where were learned on a tour a bit of the history of the country and the wounds that exist from that history. A key part of the history is the 36 year civil war (1960-1996) that ravished the country. During that conflict an estimated 300,000 people "disappeared" as part of a terror campaign.The next stop on the tour that afternoon was FAFG (The Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation) a non-governmental organization that recovers the remains of the disappeared (many found in mass graves) and seeks to identify them and return them to their families. To date they have recovered around 1% of these non-combatant victims of the war. As we stood in a laboratory that contained around two dozen skeletons, hearing about the work of the FAFG, it struck me that these executed people are a portion of the saints that have gone before us.
In the cemetery we also heard the very personal story of a young man who was one of the workers in the dump just over the bluff. During the rainy season he was caught in an avalanche of garbage and swept 12 miles away by the storm water that is drained into the landfill. That young man, who labored in the shadows of the graves of the most famous and wealthy of the country, is now in a simple grave in that same cemetery among the common people. There he is unknown to most of the world just has he had been largely unseen in life. But he is not forgotten by his friends (those leading our tour) or by his God. Another Saint that has gone before us. (for more thoughts about this saint see my friend Annette's Blog here).
The next day we were back out in the streets of Guatemala City. This time I was involved in meeting pastors from around the city and hearing about the churches role in transforming the city. One of the stops was to hear about the peace and justice work of the Catholic orders in the city. During that time we were told the story of Assistant Bishop Juan Jose Gerardi Conedera. He was the Bishop that delivered to the government the report from the Catholic Church exposing their findings about the "disappearances" during the civil war. Two days later, April 24, 1998, he was found beaten beyond recognition in front of his home. Another Saint that has gone before us.
That second day of the tours began in the conference room of a western style mega-church listening to Shorty who is a pastor and church planter in some of the hardest areas of Guatemala City. Shorty explained that he often calls his daughters before who goes into one of the neighborhoods, in case he is killed. He challenged us by asking, "Are you willing to die where God has asked you to go?" Again, my thoughts returned to those Saints who have gone before and found myself thinking about my commitment to the place(s) God has called me.
Will God, and my bothers and sisters in Christ, see me as a saint that went before?
Peace and All Good from Guatemala.
Joel K
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