Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle A

Reflecting on Matthew 10: 26-33

If you spend much time in the company of Jesuits who lived in Latin America in the eighties and nineties, it won’t be long before you hear the name Mev Puleo. I’ve noticed that she is the dearest friend, the most beloved companion of the Jesuits who were alive and living in Central and South America during those wrenching years of war and struggle.

She was, by all accounts, a radiantly joyful young American woman whose life changed on a bus ride, much like that world-changing train ride St. Teresa of Calcutta took in 1946. Both women looked out a window—Mev as a teenager on a family trip to Brazil in 1977, Mother Teresa traveling from Calcutta to Darjeeling —and observed the staggering distance between the world of the privileged and those who never had a chance.

Mev lived and worked as a photojournalist in El Salvador, Haiti and Brazil. She documented, from the eloquent silence of her camera, the daily courage and kindness of those who are poor, and the malevolent oppression of those who prey upon them.

She spoke in the light what she witnessed in the dark. She even, of all terrifying things, once witnessed a rape in progress. She drove her old Volkswagen up to the sidewalk and shone her headlights right onto the scene. The rapist hollered for her to leave, and when she held fast, he left instead.

Nothing is concealed that will not be revealed. She used her camera to announce far and wide the atrocities suffered by the “least” at the hands of the “greatest.” If this gospel passage (Matthew 10:26-33) brings to mind some times when you held your tongue when someone told a racist joke, take it as a nudge from the Holy Spirit to be more courageous next time.

How will you proclaim from the housetops what God has whispered in your heart?

Kathy McGovern ©2020

Ordinary Time - Cycle A