Make us to be numbered with thy saints

 

A bountiful harvest

While power outages, rationing of gasoline and shortages of medicines continue, we give thanks for bountiful harvests of eggs, avocados, mangos, passion fruit, pineapples, papaya, plantains and bananas, cacao, tomatos and peppers. We share this production with elderly people in the neighborhood who live alone because their children have left the country looking for work. This Sunday, May 9, is named Rogate Sunday on the historic church calendar and precedes the Minor Rogation Days, the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday before the Feast of the Ascension, which are dedicated to prayers for crops (I remember such prayers at this time from childhood). The Minor Rogation Days, instituted by Bishop Mamertus of Vienne (Gaul) in 470, originally were observed by processional litanies and fasting as a supplication for clement weather for the crops and deliverance from pestilence and famine. There is a good discussion of the Rogation Days tradition by Mark Braden, pastor of Zion Lutheran Church, Detroit, Michigan, on the Gottesdienst.org Web site. Pastor Braden visited Venezuela several times as a visiting professor with the Juan de Frias Theological Institute.

 Inordinate honor for an honorable man

 Friday, April 30, 2021, was a landmark day for many Venezuelans as Dr. José Gregorio Hernández Cisneros (1864-1919) was beatified at a formal ceremony in Caracas. Beatification is the penultimate stage before being officially declared a saint by the Roman church, a process that began for Dr. Hernández in 1949. He was in many ways a remarkable man, but it is an error to honor someone with a status that belongs only to Christ, or that all who receive baptismal grace may not be numbered among the saints.

When he was only 13 and a half years old, José Gregorio Hernández made the long and difficult journey from his remote village in the Andes Mountains to Caracas to embark on a career in medicine. At 17 he began his studies at the Central University of Venezuela, where he still is remembered as one of the most brilliant medical students in the university's history. After post-graduate studies at research laboratories in Paris and Berlin, he returned to Venezuela to introduce the latest scientific techniques in medicine to his country. During the height of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, which killed 23,000 people in Venezuela in three months, he took his medical practice into the poorest barrios of Caracas. Dr. Hernández, however, did not die as a result of the flu, but was struck down by an automobile, perhaps one of the first in Venezuela.

Beatification is a recognition accorded by the Roman Catholic Church of a deceased person's entrance into heaven and capacity to intercede on behalf of individuals who pray in his or her name. The difference between this and full canonization is that veneration of the beatified is limited to a particular region or group of people, while full canonization means all Roman Catholics must revere the deceased as a saint.

As matter of fact, Venezuelans have prayed to Dr. Hernández for healing for years before this official recognition. Popular piety in Venezuela may be described as “Christo-paganism”. In most pre-Christian traditions, there is a distant “God above the gods” who is not interested in the daily lives of human beings. Rather it is better to pray to the many intermediate beings between men and their Creator, such as the souls of the ancestors and spirits who control the forces of nature. There is belief in an afterlife, but little hope of a happy one. The best one expect is to enjoy the good things of this life by the favor of supernatural beings. In “Christo-paganism”, the triune God of the Scriptures is placed in the role of the distant “high God” and the Virgin, saints, angels and other beings become the intermediaries.

Historically there have been three levels to this popular piety in Venezuela. The first is the veneration of the Virgin and the saints approved by the Roman church throughout the world. The second is a kind of “folk Catholicism” in which there are shrines and festivals dedicated to persons not officially recognized as saints by Rome. The church often does not actively promote these activities, but does not actively discourage them, either. The third level is the invocation and supplication of non-Christian deities, such as the goddess, Maria Lionza, and even demonic entities. The Roman church, of course, is opposed to this, notice that, aside from the approval or disapproval of the church, it is hard to differentiate between these levels and many Venezuelans do not.

So for years, devout Roman Catholics in Venezuelans have placed images of Dr. José Gregorio Hernández in their homes and chapels, but not only strict Catholics, but also followers of Santería and indigenous brujeria (witchcraft) and espiritismo (spiritism) invoke the good doctor’s name.

As Lutherans, we may recognize the achievements and moral example of Dr. Hernández, but we reject this concept of sainthood. All who die in baptismal faith enter immediately into the church triumphant with all of the surety of Christ's promises. Not by their own merits, for all have fallen short of the glory of God and none have earned merits that may be applied to others. Nor does Holy Scripture teach invocation and supplications of particular saints (heroes of the faith), for such honor belongs to Christ as the only Mediator between God and men (1 Timothy 2:5).

The Apology of the Augsburg Confession, Art. XXI (IX): Of the Invocation of Saints, says in part: “Our Confession approves honors to the saints (heroes of the faith). For here a threefold honor is to be approved. The first is thanksgiving. For we ought to give thanks to God because He has shown examples of mercy; because He has shown that He wishes to save men; because He has given teachers or other gifts to the Church. And these gifts, as they are the greatest, should be amplified, and the saints themselves should be praised, who have faithfully used these gifts, just as Christ praises faithful business-men, Matt. 25:21, 23. The second service is the strengthening of our faith; when we see the denial forgiven Peter, we also are encouraged to believe the more that grace truly superabounds over sin, Rom. 5:20. The third honor is the imitation, first, of faith, then of the other virtues, which every one should imitate according to his calling.

“But since neither a command, nor a promise, nor an example can be produced from the Scriptures concerning the invocation of saints, it follows that conscience can have nothing concerning this invocation that is certain. And since prayer ought to be made from faith, how do we know that God approves this invocation? Whence do we know without the testimony of Scripture that the saints perceive the prayers of each one?

“Again, the adversaries not only require invocation in the worship of the saints, but also apply the merits of the saints to others, and make of the saints not only intercessors, but also propitiators. This is in no way to be endured. For here the honor belonging only to Christ is altogether transferred to the saints. For they make them mediators and propitiators, and although they make a distinction between mediators of intercession and mediators [the Mediator] of redemption, yet they plainly make of the saints mediators of redemption.”

Please pray, therefore, for all the Venezuelans who do not yet understand that there is one Mediator between God and man, and that we may approach the Father in prayer through the atoning death and the intercession of His Son and with faith given and nurtured by the Holy Spirit. Also that all the baptized are numbered among the communion of saints and enter the church triumphant immediately upon passing from this life. Amen.

Speaking of pandemics

A full year passed without any reported cases of COVID-19 in La Caramuca, but now there have been three. All these people are recovering and none died. However Zugeimer Aranguren, a member of Cristo es Amor Lutheran Church, our sister congregation in Barquisimeto (three hours drive north) lost her grandfather and an aunt to COVID-19.

Reuters reported that on April 5, “Venezuela’s main academies of medicine and science on Monday urged renewed efforts to vaccinate the South American nation’s population against the coronavirus amid a spike in infections that has led the government to extend lockdown measures. The pandemic was significantly less severe than expected in Venezuela in 2020 due to widespread gasoline shortages that restricted vehicle movement, the National Academy of Medicine and the National Academy of Physical, Mathematical and Natural Sciences said in a joint statement. But Venezuela now faces a worst case scenario of limited vaccine availability, combined with an increase in infections following the relaxation of quarantine measures during the Christmas and Carnival holidays, the academies said.”

In February, Venezuela began its immunization program against the COVID-19 virus by vaccinating front-line health care personnel with the Russian vaccine Sputnik V. On April 24, Venezuela received a new shipment of some 80,000 doses of Russia's Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine. The government’s priority will inoculating healthcare workers and the elderly with the new shipment. Venezuela has also inoculated public officials, firefighters, civil protection personnel and oxygen distribution workers. It is estimated that health care professionals comprise 26 percent of those who have died from COVID-19 in Venezuela.

O God, You desire not the death of sinners, but rather that we turn from our wickedness and live. Graciously behold Your people who plead to You and spare us. Withdraw the scourge of Your wrath and be moved in mercy to turn away this pestilence from us; for the sake of Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.