Youth worldwide can be reluctant to take the initiative when it comes to organizing and participating in church activities. However, this hasn’t been my experience in Lima, Peru where I have worked as a missionary for the last 4 years.
Every year the youth in the parish of Our Lord of Peace in El Pacifico, the suburb on the Northern side of Lima have been the leading protagonist in organizing and running the Via Crucis (Way/Stations of the Cross) on Good Friday.
The youth aged between 16-26 years, either belong to the parish youth group called COPAJU (Community of Parish Youth) or the 200-300 young people who prepare for the Sacrament of Confirmation annually in the parish which began life as a fledgling Columban mission 30 years ago. While the adults participate and join in the Stations of the Cross these two groups of youth supply the inspiration and organization for this very colourful Good Friday procession and generally there is no lack of talent and enthusiasm for the task at hand.
During Lent cloth, leather and wood is bought from the meagre funds these youth groups have at their disposal. Then they set to work laboriously sewing the life-like Roman and Jewish costumes and fashioning the weapons of antiquity the actors will wear and use on the day.
On week nights, the youth gather to rehearse scripts and scenes for the Via Crucis committing the lines taken from the Scriptures to memory, the idea being to produce as real a presentation of Jesus’ last traumatic hours as possible.
Despite the fact that all the actors are amateurs, nothing is left to chance. The young man portraying Jesus has to be genuinely capable of expressing the pain Jesus would have felt while being strong enough to carry a moderately heavy replica of the Cross.The Roman soldiers are usually selected from the burlier of the males and the girls representing Mary, Veronica and the Jewish Women who accompanied Jesus to the Cross wail and lament as Jesus passes by on his 3 kilometre walk to the site where he will be “crucified”.
The Roman soldiers are usually determined to give the women actors plenty to cry about, leaving Jesus covered in red welts from the lashings applied by light weight leather dye covered whips.
During the 3 years I participated in our parish Via Crucis, as many as 2000 people might accompany the procession on any one year. The adults would stop while our youthful actors would re-enact the last tragic scenes of Jesus’ life then follow on with a more formal prayer commemorating each station.
The biggest challenge for me and many of the adults was always the final kilometre which passed through a very poor neighbourhood perched on a narrow, rocky ridge - followed by a steep ascent to the top of the 300 metre high Santa Cruz (Holy Cross) hill.
Some of the parishioners joked that I wouldn’t make it to the summit and should quit while I was ahead. This only made me more determined to reach the summit. One year I thought I was doing well as I slowly plodded up the pathway leading to the top only to see 5 young men run up the hill carrying the cross over their heads in order to prepare for the 14th Station before the crowds arrived. On the summit our Jesus was duly strapped to the cross and elevated to represent the final but glorious suffering of the crucified Christ.
What motivates the youth of El Pacifico parish to participate so enthusiastically in and make the Via Crucis their own? I believe they identify Jesus’ final sufferings with their own struggle in life. Perhaps the message for them and us is we truly have to embrace suffering if we are to understand life and be able to live it to the fullest.
Fr George Hogarty SSC is currently serving in Peru.
