Getting to know the people in this community of Rancho Anapra Corpus Christi Parish, Juarez City, México, was my number one priority when I arrived here after learning Spanish. I visited families and got involved in parish activities such as catechism class and prayer groups.

During a recent visit to Peru, Maritza Upiachiwa and her husband Jorge Sanchez invited me to celebrate Sunday Mass for the community of the chapel of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Chuquitanta in Huandoy parish on the north side of Lima.

Even before the Pope convoked the Synod on the Amazon in 2019, and issued his dramatic exhortation, Columban missionaries in South America have been eagerly engaged in campaigns to support the local Church, and to protect the ecology and peoples of the Amazon against injustice and exploitation.

A while ago I was feeling discouraged and someone reminded me that “a hundred-yard dash is not over at the 99th yard.” In other words, “don’t give up too early.” It was good advice. Now we all find ourselves heading into the last few weeks of 2020, but we should not just resign ourselves to coasting till the end of the year. Turning this strange year into a successful year means discovering the Lord’s will in the circumstances we find ourselves in each day.

Earlier this year one of my friends quipped that “the most useless purchase he ever made was a 2020 planner.” Indeed, the “at a glance planning calendar” on the wall in my office is full of crossed out commitments and dotted all over with appointments that never happened. It tells quite a story. Who could even have imagined on the first of January that we were headed for a shut-down of so much of the economy and of so many aspects of our personal lives? Who would have