GUAM
Jungle Watch
Father Efren Adversario
Dear Tim and Family,
Greetings to you and your family during this festive time of anticipating the Lord’s coming in our midst. May He give you peace, and reward you generously for the brave endeavors you have undertaken in service of the Holy Mother Church. I would like to have this on jungle watch when you are able to have time. Thank you, once again.
Luke 4:18 ff. “The Spirit of the Lord has anointed me and sent me to bring glad tidings to the poor, to give liberty to captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to bring freedom to the oppressed, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.”
These words uttered by Jesus Christ echo the words of the prophet Isaiah as he announced the beginning of his public ministry. These are words given to us as a mandate of our discipleship. Christmas is a feast that, although commercialized and often taken out of context, reminds us to heed the profound tome of incarnational salvation. Christmas is not about a vulnerable and helpless little infant or about nebulous little cherubs singing away “Gloria in Excelsis Deo,” as the late Fr. Raymond Brown (with whom I had the honor to work on his library before his death) expounded in his book, the Adult Christ at Christmas,” but a call to arms about the stewardship entrusted to us. …
This Christmas I hereby affix my name to the cause of Concerned Catholics of Guam. I believe in their goal to build bridges and to foster transparency (in all levels of administrative decisions) in the Archdiocese of Agana. More importantly, I believe in the integrity of their leaders. Prior to their incorporation, I had the honor of individually engaging Mr Perez, Ms Lujan, Rev Martinez, and Mr Shinohara on different matters unrelated to the current church brouhaha. They are dyed-in-the-wool Chamorro laypeople (or clergy in the case of Deacon Steve) whose sole purpose is to facilitate healing that comes from seeking answers to issues that current leadership has chosen to arrogantly ignore. They have simply given face to the valid and just right of laypeople to know where their donations go, and to truthful answers to recent decisions. It is that simple! They are respectful (and respectable!) people who would themselves shirk from confrontation but have taken great interest in the inaugural words of Jesus as he started public ministry to bring healing to our church.
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