To the Band of Brothers: March 7, 2024

How’s your Lent going?

When I first started taking Belen students on mission trips to the Dominican Republic, we built bridges. There must be over 15 bridges all over the mountains of the DR with BYM tattooed on their sides. It was tough, but important work. Often, these poor villages were blocked off from the rest of civilization during the rainy season because people could not cross them on foot. Massive amounts of water would rush down the mountains and overflow the rivers making them very dangerous.

Rivers are incredible. They are living phenomena, not simply because they are teeming with life, but because they themselves seem to think and breathe. On more than one occasion, I would go back to the places where we had built bridges and come across an amazing thing. While we had taken a long time to plan and engineer the bridge, and invested a good amount of money and hours in construction, after a year or two, the river would learn to bypass the bridge to flow with greater strength, unimpeded. If the bridge, its pillars and endpoints, blocked some of the river’s passage, the river would reroute itself and work around it. After a couple of years, the bridge had become almost useless. It was very frustrating.

I realize the spiritual life and my battle with the Devil is very similar. 

This Lent I decided one of the things I was going to do was give up social media before going to bed. I noticed I spent too much time lying in bed, scrolling through Instagram, watching useless YouTube videos, instead of offering a final prayer and falling asleep. I realized the last thought on my mind before closing my eyes was not Jesus, but the top ten touchdown passes Dan Marino threw his rookie year. The Devil, I am sure, was okay with that and I wanted to change it.

It worked. I go to bed, set my alarm for the morning, say a couple of Hail Mary’s, and fall asleep. But like the mighty rivers of the DR, the Devil seems to find a way of bypassing my intention and move around it. Just recently, I noticed that as soon as I wake up and turn off the alarm, I reach for my phone and check my text messages, read emails, and scroll through social media. Sure enough, the first thought on my mind after opening my eyes is not Jesus, but the score of the Belen baseball game that’s been posted on Instagram. I need to change that.

Like building bridges in the DR, my intention to improve my spiritual life is necessary and requires a lot of planning and hard work. But, like the rivers, the Devil always seems to find a way to snake his way around my good intentions and hard work to keep Jesus off my mind. I don’t lose hope though. Aware that this is how the Devil schemes, and convinced of God’s infinite patience and grace, I can better plan, build, and even rebuild if necessary. That’s why starting this fourth week of Lent, I have amended my Lenten sacrifice to exclude first morning use of social media. Now, the rule is to check those things only after completing my morning prayer.

As for the construction of bridges in the Dominican Republic, we now build aqueducts.

Auspice Maria.