CALLED TO SERVE

BOB SPOERL

The Privilege of Immersion
by Bob Spoerl

I am a privileged student. On May 11, following the end of my spring semester and junior year of college seminary at St. Joe’s on the campus of Loyola University Chicago, a small group of us from the Loyola University community went on what is called an Alternative Break Immersion to spend 11 days in El Salvador.

The first few days of our trip, we stayed with host families in a city named Zaragosa. With a little over 30,000 residents, it is a generally self-sustaining community about 45 minutes from San Salvador. For the seven-member-family who hosted me, this meant living in a home about the size of a 1950s style suburban ranch home in the states. However, the construction of the home was much different than what you might find here in the United States. The walls of the house were made out of concrete, the roof partially exposed, and the floor was very dry, hard dirt. If a member of the house wanted to shower, he dips a bucket into a tub full of water and pours the water over his body. When cleaning himself, he needs to be careful to preserve the water; it is often a most delicate entity. Preservation of water is a must. Doing dishes for my host family, I had to be extra careful not to waste a drop of water.

Beyond considering what it materially means to be a typical Salvadorian, our group was fortunate enough to gain an insight into the spirit and characters of our friends in El Salvador.

My friend Carl and I had an opportunity to share in Scripture reading with our host grandmother. She has been in prison and lost a husband and several sons in the long, bloody El Salvador Civil War of the 1980s. Despite feeling death in such an intimate way, she has remained a very faith filled person, a devout Catholic. On our host family’s dinner table rests a Bible; on the wall directly above the table rests a makeshift shrine to Our Lady of Guadalupe.

One afternoon, I asked my family if I could take a look at their Bible. I opened it to Psalm 23, a psalm that has helped me in several dark and dreary moments during my life. I handed Carl the Bible and asked him to read it. As we all listened, I felt like we were part of a very special sacramental moment. I grabbed my camera and took several snapshots of Carl reading.

This moment in time is but one example of many instances of sacred, tender times I experienced in El Salvador. The “we” moments are what I most cherish. These unified moments were filled with a variety of emotions: morning Mass – listening to deeply moving guitar strums and the soothing singing voice of Julieta, our faithful tour guide and spiritual mentor for the week; a prayer said at the chapel where Archbishop Oscar Romero was assassinated while he celebrated Mass; the visits made to other martyr sites; the incredibly difficult, painful trip to a village, El Mozote, where hundreds of innocent women and children had been brutally slaughtered with machetes or shot with machine guns; and moments of embrace, of joy, of eating, dancing and singing.

I realized the face of God is transparent, whispered like a gentle breeze off the Pacific Ocean on a Salvadorian beach, written in our hearts, embracing us – a love that always has something to give, no matter what we materially possess.
It is rare that we have an opportunity during our busy days living, studying and working to take time to recognize God’s presence. I am fortunate to have set times during my day to pray as a college seminarian for the Milwaukee Archdiocese, and to reflect on memories of love, of God. My prayer for everyone reading this article is that you have a chance to consider the awesome presence of God in the everyday moments of your life.

Bob Spoerl is a college seminarian for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee and a student at Loyola University, Chicago.