Since 1999, St Luke's has supported the orphanage in Haiti founded by Fr Rick Frechette, Passionist priest and doctor. Since 1987 the orphanage has cared for thousands of children through the years. Fr Rick has also built the only free pediatric hospital in Haiti, St Damien's.
Dear family and friends,
While quietly crossing the threshold from a most difficult year into a (hopefully) better year, I lit a simple fire in an old tire rim,
and with Orion twinkling in the darkness above, I contemplated the religious icon that accompanies these words.
Mary and Joseph are exhausted, thick shadows haunt their soulful eyes which are apprehensive with sadness and worry.
They lean into one other, as if each would fall over without the other.
The child Jesus is placed in between them, like the ballast keeping them upright.
His face reveals that he is absorbing the trouble in the hearts of his mother and father.
Yet a golden light surrounds his countenance, as he looks directly at you, at me.
The greek letters in the golden glow reveal his name: "I AM" (Exodus 3:14).
Big credentials for a small, troubled boy.
He is speaking to us with the gesture of his right hand,
a "hand speak" as precise in icons, as it is in signing with the deaf.
This is an exhausted refugee family, having gone overnight from being visited by Kings, to running for their lives.
We know too well the bloody reasons for their exile.
Two thousand years have past, and still today thus is life for far too many families.
Whole families, throughout the world.
Their faces blend into the same sorrowful, but blessed, togetherness of this icon:
Families of Haitians in the jungles of the Darien gap,
families of Syrians in Turkey,
of Afghans in Pakistan
of Sudanese in Congo,
families who perish altogether in the Mediterranean Sea.
These anguished families number 82 million people today, as we live and breathe and begin a new year.
Most of these refugees are women and children, fleeing violence and death in their homelands.
Pope Francis referred to their plight in his Christmas message, as a massive and forgotten human tragedy.
"These nightmares never seem to end, and by now we hardly even notice them.
We have become so used to them, that immense tragedies are being passed over in silence." (Urbi et Orbi, Christmas 2021)
There are also other kinds of refugees: their lives are marked by "The flight into virtual."
The flight of many people from their own humanity, from deep human bonds, has become for us a plague.
Alarms are sounding about the mental health of children and young adults, because of lives spent virtually streaming or gaming.
Much concerned attention is now paid to the tragic "devolution" of the human being.
People are losing the art of how to befriend and mature in friendship, how to define yourself with healthy boundaries and respect the boundaries of others, how to both compete with rivals and challenge opponents in a healthy way.
We see the consequences.
Often, the flight into virtual is the flight into emptiness, and then the flight into big trouble, as you try to deal with the emptiness.
Pornography, gambling, dark chat groups, movements against the values and principles that make us able to live in a civil and civilized way,
sites that enable, rather than challenge, tendencies to baseness, racism, and falsehood.
If the emptiness gets to you, and you are thinking of suicide, the dark side of the web will encourage you to just "go ahead," and even offer suggestions to help you end your life.
In relation to truth, and its liberating discovery and unfolding, we rather live in a time of gaslighting, of smoke and mirrors, of fierceness in encounters, of intense division and hatred.
The tragic flight is from humanity itself.
Yet, as we flee from our very humanity, we celebrate at Christmastide the awesome wonder that God entered into it gladly,
in order to awaken within us all the best angels of our human nature.
This is a hopeful cause for joy, especially as we begin a new year of intense challenges.
Humanity in Haiti is also at a very low ebb, as many of you know from following the news.
A lot of our time now is spent trying helping relocate internal refugees from city wide violence (especially in Martissant),
trying to help kidnapped people get freed unharmed (at present, two Catholic seminarians),
trying to help the homeless rebuild their lives (the earthquake in the south was only five months ago),
trying to help bind the wounds of victims of armed bandits (a Catholic priest was shot yesterday in Miragoane)
trying to grieve and help bury those who did not survive armed assaults (on Saturday, we will bury Marco, who grew up in our NPH homes
and worked as a "blood runner," getting blood from the Red Cross for our hospitalized patients.)
And, of course, trying to keep our normal work going.
The Pope is right. We are too used to the atrocities. The overriding reaction is silence.
Bishop Dumas wrote a strong condemnation, lament, and call to action on the shooting of Fr Francois, as has been done many times by the Bishops of Haiti.
The usual response is the sound of crickets.
As the saying goes, "it is what it is."
But people of good will, and people of faith, cannot stop there.
"It is what we are allowing it be."
And we need to work hard to change it.
With many of you, we will fight with all our ability to change what should not be,
what should never, ever have become "what it is."
This year in Haiti, people on the street don't say "have a good year" (Bon ané).
instead they say "have a good battle" (Bon kombat).
Everyone here squarely knows what they are up against.
These phrase "Bon Kombat" echos the words of St Paul:
"I have fought the good fight, I have run to good race," (2 Timothy 4:7)
The good fight will not leave you looking (or walking) like you did in your prime.
The good race will guarantee your intimate knowledge of the loneliness of the long distance runner.
But St Paul finishes by saying, "I have kept the faith."
This is a great New Year's resolution, wish and prayer:
May we keep the faith
in our humanity,
in ourselves,
in each other,
in what we can create together,
and in God.
Blessings of peace, strength, courage and wisdom for you and your families, in a new year of challenges.
Thank you for your generous and precious help over many years,
Fr Richard Frechette CP DO
Port au Prince Haiti
January 6, 2022
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Fr. Rick Frechette and the St. Luke Foundation for Haiti ask for your prayers and support.
See their Amazon Wish List for needed items, below.
Since 1999 St. Luke's Parish, under the guidance, love, and compassion of Gloria Josephs aka The Haiti Lady, has supported Our Little Brothers and Sisters Orphanage in Haiti. Founded by Father Rick Frechette, Passionist priest and doctor, the orphanage has cared for tens of thousands of children through the years. Fr. Rick also built the only free pediatric hospital in Haiti, St. Damien Pediatric Hospital, a 224-bed pediatric hospital which provides services to over 80,000 patients each year.
Fr. Rick Frechette in the Chapel at St. Damien Pediatric Hospital.
Fr. Rick also founded the St. Luke Foundation for Haiti which creates dignified jobs in social service fields; delivers water to slums, hospitals, and clinics; and buries unclaimed dead from the city morgue.
With COVID cases spiking alarmingly in Haiti, and access to critical supplies thwarted due to crime and corruption, Fr. Rick and the St. Luke Foundation are reaching out for help. Please consider supporting this important ministry.
Team members in Scranton, PA have arranged to send an emergency shipment to Haiti within the next ten days. They have put together a wish list on Amazon of items needed most which we can purchase for them.
How You Can Help:
Dear Friends,
As you may have read from the recent email from Father Rick (here), the COVID cases are spiking in Haiti. To make matters worse, we are having difficulty obtaining the items necessary to treat our COVID patients because of the increasing gang violence and kidnappings.
So many of you have generously reached out and asked how to help! Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated. Thank you so very much for your consideration, your kind words, and your prayers!
May God Bless You,
St. Luke Foundation Team
Care teams at St. Damien Hospital
The St. Luke Foundation for Haiti is a 100% Haitian-run non-profit organization, providing education, medical care and dignified humanitarian outreach in places that have been under-served by traditional service providers. We believe that by following a shared vision for the future, we can walk hand-in-hand towards a more prosperous and independent Haiti.
Dear family and friends,
Even though the sun was shining brightly,
there were the thick, dark, invisible clouds of evil overhead,
mocking both the light of day, and the light of God.
This was true both for him and for HIM.
There were expressed threats to kill both HIM and him, uttered in public and private places.
Bad words can pierce ones body worse than a bullet, which at least finishes you off in a matter of minutes.
The words of hate linger in the mind and heart,
they brood and multiply, spreading like cancer,
and they twist joys into anxieties and confidence into dread.
For HIM the words caused no less than the sweating of blood.
For him, the words caused both fear and a furor.
As for the onlookers, they had lived with killings and threats for so long, that one more violent death could not possibly interfere with finishing the rest of the sandwich in their hands, or with delivering the punchline of a joke they were in the middle of telling.
The onlookers had seen many crucifixions on the hill, they were all the same.
They had seen many gunshot dead in the streets, they were all the same.
Been there, done that. Next.
But this is not true for little onlookers, children for whom violence sets their gaze, and their hearts, rigid.
How can we soften them?
It was the hour of first vespers, Palm Sunday 2021.
I was at his funeral, and preparing for HIS week of Holy Memory.
For HIM, the hammer set to the nail was an announcement. Those closest would hear it.
Some would shiver- would you have shivered?
For him, the announcement was a thunderous crack, when the small metal lever struck the bullet. I was near enough to hear it, but I couldn't.
I was lifting a box of medicines, in front of a large, screeching fan.
But as chickens scatter at any blow, some towards and some away,
and since our eyes are more finely tuned to movement than to acuity,
the sight of the our staff running in all directions dropped my heart to my feet.
And I ran, heart-footed, toward, and not away.
For HIM, a lance in the side was the grand finale, the outflow of the remaining life blood.
For him, the side was torn open wide by a ballistic mini spear..
"We need to cover him. GET A SHEET!"
The children on the street would then see a red spotted cloth, rather than his empty eyes and generous entrails.
Long ago, there was nothing to cover HIM, high on the cross.
Two of us preach.
Fr Fitho speaks first, and my eyes wander.
Not for lack of interest is his moving exhortation away from revenge and toward placing confidence in God's justice,
but because it was impossible not to lock my eyes on the faces of his four small children in their grief, of his wife on the floor,
of his white haired mother lamenting in heart wrenching rythm.
My turn to preach came.
Full heart, useless tongue.
For him there were two priests, each a one-time preach.
For HIM, preachers have spanned twenty centuries and counting.
My words came out as they wished, my eyes spoke more to the eyes of others, well known to me,
whose presence at the funeral prayers was a tortured reliving of that day, many of few years ago,
when they lost their mother or father, daughter or brother, in this dreadful, public way.
Pie, Jesu.
My eyes locked with all of these eyes, looking for viridans (greenness) deep within- know from ancient times as the very first vital sign.
It is there, but dimly lit.
"Lead kindly light amid encircling doom, lead though me on."
For HIM, there were few eyes to look into.
Most were not there to pay any respects, but to be amused.
I they had iphones they would have filmed and posted, with smiling selfies.
Others there were functionaries.
Like the doorkeeper in NY who recently closed the door on the elderly woman being beaten at the very portal, for being a foreigner.
But present there for HIM, most beautifully and meaningfully, were three Marys and a John.
They radiated viridans through the deepest sorrow and grief, as HIS viridans receded.
Yes, I do see it in their eyes. Alleluia! Strange how I can be happy for a minute, at such a time.
I sent for them today and met them in Tabarre, in the name of HIM who, Isaiah promised, "will not quench a dimly lit flame."
We will become friends. I renewed our sincere condolences and share pain, shared some home made chocolates, promised help with schooling.
After a while, they went home with some Easter tilapia from our ponds, and some cash for help over the holidays/
When we start by protecting the failing flame in each other through friendship, we prepare the way for God to do a great work.
Lightening the load, enlightening the heart, and helping light the way is holy and luminous work.
About HIM, there was a motive-minded posting on the Cross
"The King of the Jews"
When this was challenged, Pilate retorted
"Quod scripsi, scripsi."
About him, there was a motive-minded posting on facebook by his killer
"Old men don't strike old men"
which was challenged with
"Old men dont kill old men!"
answered with silence.
(But in fact, neither are old.)
Ironically, at this point of writing this reflection, I just ran out and delivered a baby in the hallway, having heard the screams.
Enter, stage right, a new baby overflowing with viridans, and lungs full of the cry of life. It's an early Easter gift.
Joseph and Nicodemus took down HIS body, bathed and anointed it with wonderful oils,
to prepared it for burial.
Another Fitho and I lifted his body, and sutured his ragged wounds back together.
As I held his hand away from his own wound as pushed and sutured, it was still warm in mine.
Viridans departs slowly, but finally.
HIS was Calvary.
So was his.
And so has Calvary marked ours lives in the strongest of ways, from COVID, cancers, car wrecks and chaos.
The crowding of Calvary is the mark of our recent years.
On Calvary, we are in blessed company.
And the looking into the eyes has been through tablets and phone screens, on facetime and zoom.
We have been impoverished by the necessity of standing by the cross virtually, and being there by proxy.
Such has been the lonely and necessary isolation.
But virtual light is better than none.
And we have much more to our stories than virtual light.
This verse is from the 10th verse of the 700 year-old Good Friday Hymn, "Stabat Mater":
Make me feel as thou hast felt
make my soul to glow and melt
with the love of Christ my Lord.
The multitudes of dimly lit lights on the Calvarys of today,
joined with HIS great light, outshine any supernova of stars.
Our hope and our joy is this:
"The light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it."
May the Light of Jesus strengthen the God-light in your heart, and may we recommit to the continual enlightenment of each other, in HIS name.
Happy Easter and wishes for all the blessings and graces of this Holy Season, for you and your families!
Fr Richard Frechette
March 31, 2021
Port au Prince
Dear Friends,
I am at a loss for words right now about how difficult things are for the Haitian people, and of course for the world in general.
Just like you, we keep working hard, our faith is in overdrive, and we are confident in God's promise that we will be rewarded with fruit that will last.
I am sure you agree that It's a great mix- our feeble efforts, and God's great blessing on them!
I am very pleased to share with you the 2020 report of our ongoing work in Haiti.
Let's appreciate the part each has played to fill the year, if it were a glass, at least half full of water.
The file is big to send any other way, but you can see by clicking on this link.
I share with those who might be interested some of my own reflections on the liturgical readings for Lent.
You can find them on here:
First Week https://youtu.be/vGIPHxNuZG8
Second Week https://youtu.be/HBIMOdav4nU
Third Week https://youtu.be/nVlgs7yGOxo
You will find the two to come, on stlukehaiti.org.
During lent we recall God's ancient remedy for spiritual illness: prayers, self denial and good works for the poor. Let's take the medicine gladly.
Thanks for what you do in your daily lives, to help those who are in in trouble or heavily burdened.
With gratitude and prayers,
Fr Rick Frechette CP DO
Port au Prince
March 6, 2021