Published: Saturday | April 6, 2013
Pastor Brown
Could this be real? It was real. I attended a wonderful celebration just on the eve of Easter. The Seventh-day Adventists were celebrating at the Medallion Hotel their fifth year of Good Samaritan Inn at 5 Heroes Circle, Kingston, where there is a night shelter, a food line and clothes line and a training centre for the poor.
Our Missionaries of the Poor Sisters are practically next door at Holy Innocents' Home, Heroes Circle, in service of pregnant women, a clinic, a soup kitchen and Sunday worship for our neighbours. We give thanks that Heroes Circle is becoming more and more an annex of God's mercy served by Christians: Adventists who keep their Sabbath holy and Roman Catholics who worship their Risen Christ on Sunday.
"Are you a Jesuit, Father?" Pastor Everett Brown, president of the Jamaican Union for Seventh-day Adventists, asked smilingly. "No, I am a Missionary of the Poor," I remarked. "It is a Jamaican order founded in Jamaica. It is all over the world." "Where?" asked Pastor Brown. "In Uganda, Kenya, Philippines, Indonesia, Haiti, India, and USA. All for the poor in the poorest areas, for the poorest people."
"How can that be?" "Well, I was a Jesuit, and I was trained very well. But Christ was calling me to serve the poorest of people, with Archbishop Carter's blessings. He was also a Jesuit." "I began this order by God's grace, and we are now in all these countries known as the Jamaican brothers. We offer free service."
The Rev Everett Brown offered special prayers for Pope Francis, newly elected. He prayed, "We pray for his guidance and protection - that God will pour forth many abundant blessings on him and that he will do what is the Father's will."
I was greatly moved and felt deep within me a brotherhood with our Adventist Christian brothers. There were wonderful speeches and a programme led by Mrs Yvonne Lawson. There was a simple meal, solid encouragement for others to reach out to the poor, and a chance for me to share greetings.
The hatred that David Mould intended to incite, a Jamaican now a member of the Adventists in Florida, was reversed. Instead, the Lord drew good out of evil. I felt bonded to my Adventist brethren in Jamaica, whatever the differences seemed of little consequences. They thanked Missionaries of the Poor for their leadership.
I thanked them for their wonderful example of respect, discipline, beautiful music, and their cultivation of responsible youth and stable family life. Implied was their disagreement with the David Mould approach to call me "devil" as fabricating a plot to capture Jamaica in the name of Rome.
destitute and homeless
I invited Pastor Brown, president of the Jamaica Union of the Seventh-day Adventists, to visit our monastery and our homes for the destitute and homeless and share a luncheon with our brothers.
The Seventh-day Adventists also invited Missionaries of the Poor and myself to attend a service and special luncheon in the Spanish Town Seventh-day Adventist Church on the following Saturday, which we did. What a warm and wonderful man Pastor Alton Williams is! He had 12 of us brothers sit in the front seats of worship at his Spanish Town church.
We prayed, we sang, we worshipped with our Adventist brothers, honouring our one true God.
There was so much warmth, special attention and good wishes being extended to all our brothers. They were really one with us, as the Mystical Body of Jesus is intended to be. Jesus was the centre of our unity. Jesus is the foundation of our unity.
We were so glad that our Adventist brothers and sisters had invited us to yet a second gathering of Christians. Our brothers sang their hearts out. Again, Pastor Alton Williams prayed for new Pope Francis, "I pray that he will fulfil the will of God's plan for him; that he will obey the Lord and do whatever He wills." There was a moment of profound silence.
Again, I felt that something special was happening in God's Kingdom. We were all coming from different directions to the one true God on Mount Zion.
Pastor Williams called me to give a word of greeting. I prayed for Christian unity. I prayed that we would be one even as Jesus, the Father, and the Holy Spirit are one.
I prayed for our country, especially for our poor. I prayed that all Christians be one under Christ, our one Leader, in order to battle against the one common enemy, Satan.
We are all a people of love and forgiveness. We are all against abortion, euthanasia, same-sex marriage, racism and materialism. In between, the congregation cried out, "Amen!" and "Alleluia!"
I thanked Pastor Williams and his congregation and we invited him to come and visit our centres and share a meal with our brothers and myself. I invited him to our musical productions at the National Arena which are all Christian.
The warm Jamaican congregation of Seventh-day Adventists at Spanish Town filled the brothers and myself with a sense of our mission. We are here to serve Christ, to unite Christians to serve the poorest of people.
The enemy is in the shadows. We must meet, unite, pray together, and drive out the evils that are being introduced to our deeply Christian people. Jamaicans, stand together and reject Satan!
Father Richard Ho Lung is founder of Missionaries of the Poor. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.
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