On the Contemplatio…
Written by: Emilio Travieso
“First, it is well to remark two things: the first is that love ought to be put more in deeds than in words. The second, love consists in interchange between the two parties….”
(Spiritual Exercises 230-231, from the Contemplation to Attain Love)
Most Friday evenings after work, I preside at a communion service in the parish where I live in
There’s one family in particular that I enjoy visiting. Nearly everyone I’ve ever visited in the
Since I enjoy chatting so much with this family, it is often dark by the time I’m ready to go home. Or rather, we all start getting nervous and wanting me to get home when we see that it’s gotten dark. The neighborhood, a typical “Two-Thirds World” slum, is dangerous at night. My friends always insist on accompanying me not just out of their alleyway, but all the way down the street and then up the solitary steps leading to the main avenue that takes me to my neighborhood. Walking with them, I feel safe.
Recently, two of the young men in the family, Axly and Guepson, started to tell me about the problems they were having with their boss. They sell frozen yogurt cones on the street, pushing a heavy machine through traffic all day, and make almost nothing after the boss takes his 80% cut. More than the exploitation and the physical dangers of the job, though, what hurts them to the bone are the daily insults and humiliation they receive from him. Because they are Haitian migrants, the boss thinks he can treat them like dogs. (For the record, the boss himself is a migrant from another Latin American country; he is not Dominican).
The Jesuit Refugee and Migrant Service, where I work, took on the case. After we got the Dominican Labor Department involved, the boss has begun pressuring his employees to sign a blank form with no explanation at the end of every workday, filling in whatever figures he wants after they sign, as a strategy to avoid legal problems.
Most of the employees sign the forms, because they are intimidated by the boss’ violent threats. When an employee refused to sign one night last week, he was physically beaten by the boss and one of his henchmen; they had recently pulled two guns on Axly, too. Nevertheless, the next day Guepson called to tell me that he had decided to refuse to sign the blank forms when he returned his frozen yogurt machine that night. The decision took courage; he knew that at the very least, it would cost him his only source of income, but it was the only way he could assert his dignity, which is worth much more.
Afraid of what might happen, another Jesuit and I accompanied Guepson to the warehouse that night. Seeing that our friend was not alone, the boss refrained from doing Guepson any physical harm when he fired him. On the way back home, I noticed that Guepson was shaken up a bit, but in his eyes I saw the freedom and peace of a clean conscience.
Reflecting on this experience in prayer, I see the importance of letting oneself be welcomed, loved and accompanied, in order to be able to do the same. And I feel grateful, to God who has loved us first, and to my friends who have opened their homes and their lives to me, inviting me to walk together with them.
No related posts.
This is quite a story, Emilio.
Thanks.
It’s amazing to hear these stories and know they are a reality to so many.
I work with many migrant workers who don’t know what reading, writing, and signing on a line is. I work with families who trust what I say and look down and give no input to what they want, I’m sure out of fear many times. A fear that only paralizes.
I work with families in the Miami-Dade school system, who have children with special needs and typicaly developing children. I always pray I can be an instrument of love with these families and give them an awareness of how integral they are in their children’s future. I try to give them tools to use, including their voice. My meetings many times turn into 4 hours instead of one but I go to sleep at night thanking God that I was an instrument in sharing with a family the awareness of their voice to share their thoughts, their questions, their worries, their love for their children. I will not leave without genuine input from the parents who blindly trust in me, out of respect, but many times out of humiliation that they can’t understand all the paperwork, and when you get to know them a little more and see the working conditions they bear during one/two jobs in the nurseries and fields and continue to live on two matresses in a crowded room, in what looks like a shack, with a family of 10 – it is a gift to see that glow in their eyes after they leave my classroom. That glow of empowerment – an empowerment of having a voice and of having basic human rights to make a choice for their family whom they love so much.
The gift God has given me to work with these families is beyond amazing. The love their children share with me and that the families themselves give -many times with just a smile, glow in their eyes, and the fact they trust me with their children, is a gift I treasure. Many times, culturally, they don’t express love with hugs and kisses as I am used too – it’s in their actions and dedication – they also express it back by keeping me safe when I stay late many times at work. They watch out for our whole school which they have come to treasure.
God has blessed me with my school family – I see God and learn from Him so much through all the children and their parents.
God has also blessed me with my faith and my family. My blood family and my extended family of all those who surround me day in and day out. I am happy to see that God cares for my brother through his family in DR – I am thankful for Axly, Guepson who care for my brother at night. I am thankful for the Jesuit family who helps Emi discern where he is to love and receive love and hold him up in prayer every second of his day, as we do as well from Miami.
May God always use Emi as an instrument and all the people he meets along the way to teach us and help us experiment God’s genuine and free and amazing love. May Jesus and Mary continue to keep Emi, and all who surround him, safe in the darkness of the night and in the sunshine of the day. I will keep this “icecream cart boss” in my prayers, that his heart may be transformed through the glance he got, from Guepson’s eyes, of God’s amazing and free love. Let us pray for all the Guespons in the world – for they are many. Amen.
Leave your response!
Search Ignatian Life
Authors
Tag cloud
Websites We Like
Other Blogs
Find us on Facebook
Twitter Feed
Contact