Siempre Adelante!
Siempre Adelante! Keep moving forward! This was the motto of Saint Junípero Serra, and also describes the movement of my recent six-day pilgrimage in California to all 21 of missions that San Serra, along with his confrere and successor, Father Fermin Lasuén, founded from 1769 to 1823.
This motto that Pope Francis highlighted in his homily at Serra’s canonization Mass is not only necessary to complete 21 stops stretching some 750 miles in 6 days, but to reach the goal of our life—salvation. As Pope Benedict famously said, “Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.” (Deus Caritas Est) I’ll admit that even though I get tired from time to time, I love living life this way.
My experience of this trip was a reminder that my life is never boring or mundane, but a constant stream of newness that moves me outside of myself, out of any tendency towards introversion and isolation into a daily adventure that awaits me. Even though my trip and my life of ministry seem demanding at times, they truly are gifts that move me forward on a pilgrimage, a journey that constantly keeps me on the move, preventing me from getting stuck in one place.
While I’m grateful for this way of life, I wonder at times … how do I arrive at any point of stability if my life is a constant movement, change and transformation? How do I reconcile a need for stability with a life of constant movement and change?
Well, if stability to me or you means a resistance to movement or change – or apathy, complacency or self-sufficiency – then it would be impossible and torturous to live the Christian vocation. However, if what we mean by stability is a sense of faith, firmness, health, and endurance within the course of movement and change, then we’ve got something that really is helpful!
I realized in my study of Serra’s life, and my reflection on my own, that it’s not a reliance on building perfect structures that is the source of this strength, but it’s God’s constant care and companionship that provides this stability through life. And as Pope Francis said in Philadelphia, “the history of the Church … is really a story not about building walls, but about breaking them down. It is a story about generation after generation of committed Catholics going out to the peripheries, and building communities of worship, education, charity and service to the larger society.”
After my trip, I wondered … what did Serra achieve, what were the fruits of his labor? What provoked this question was the fact that not much of the original structures of the missions lasted more than a few decades. So, did he succeed in his mission to build the kingdom of God in California, or better yet, have our founders succeeded in building up the kingdom of God in southwestern Indiana?
Like churches in our diocese, most of the original sites in California have endured as shrines and active parishes. And like our communities, most of the culture in California looks a lot different than it did at the beginning, and is still in desperate need of the Gospel. Even though this situation is something that San Serra would probably be appalled at, he would not be discouraged by it.
I think he would say to us what he constantly had to remind himself and his fellow missionaries of – despite all the challenges and obstacles we face as Christians living in the world: Stay the course, continue the mission, siempre aldelante, keep moving forward!
Father Droste is associate pastor of Annunciation of the Lord Parish in Evansville.
