Fr. Jim Michler is a St. Louis priest missionary serving in Bolivia, through our Latin America Apostolate.
I recently attended a meeting in an area of our parish called Las Lomas, where there is the hope of building a chapel. I arrived at 9:30 p.m. and the meeting had not yet started. There were three of us, and, as is the custom, we read the Gospel passage of the day. The lady who was present did not say anything after the other man and I shared our reflection on the reading. When she was invited to respond she told the story of giving birth to her first son.
After some months, she started feeling nauseous, and after consulting with the doctor she found out that she would have a baby. Around the fifth month of pregnancy, while carrying some packages, she slipped and fell, and noticed some bleeding. She returned to the doctor and was told that she had lost her unborn child. The lady did not believe this and chose to spend some days of complete bed rest. She was very careful after that and happily gave birth to her first son, who is healthy and active in the community where the meeting was held. She believes that the birth of her first child was due to the intercession of the Blessed Mother.
Many people in Bolivia are devoted to Mary the Mother of God and will do such things as go on pilgrimage in order to receive a favor. For some it means dancing at Carnaval in the town of Oruro for three consecutive years. It seems that older people maintain this devotion, and their faith consists in acquiring help from Mary. In a world where people deal with poverty and are threatened by poor health, especially on the part of their children, it is understandable that their faith consists often of praying before the image of the Blessed Mother, whose intercession they consider to be powerful.
Recently, I spent a long day going to people´s homes, leading a celebration of the blessing of the image of Our Lady of Copacabana. Her feast falls on August 5th and the following day is Independence Day in Bolivia, and that is when people find it convenient to ask me to come to bless their statue of Mary.
People in Bolivia who are Christians but not Catholics will criticize these practices and claim that people are worshipping false images. Such Christians place their entire faith in the Bible and have no use for statues and other reminders of the saints. The average Bolivian Catholic, on the other hand, looks for something visible, something that can be touched, when they come to Church to pray.
It is desirable that people recognize the celebration of the Eucharist as the center of their faith, but many come to pray, thinking of the intercession of Mary or one of the saints. They often will bring their image and place it in front of the altar and ask for it to be blessed after Mass. Such is the faith of the people we are called to serve in the parish of Maria Reina in the city of La Paz, Bolivia.
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