Novices on Holy Week Mission in Bienvenido
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April 25, 2025Bienvenido is set in the lush green mountains of the Sierra Norte de Puebla, the center of the Province of Mexico’s Indigenous Mission. A Redemptorist community of three – Fathers Jonathan Muñoz Aguas, Alfonso Torres Almaraz, and Carlos Hernández Talavera – serves 13 communities with weekly masses and other pastoral needs. Some communities are more than two hours away on rocky mountainous roads; it’s impossible to give each community the full attention a parish typically receives. Every Holy Week, the Redemptorists in Bienvenido invite volunteers from all over Mexico to fill this pastoral need. This year, novices at the North American Novitiate helped each of these communities celebrate Holy Week to the fullest.Efraín Bergsaí and Cody Hill were assigned to the main parish of the area, San Agustin, in Bienvenido. The city was bustling with activities from the local coffee festival and the preparations for Holy Week. Fr. Jonathan introduced them to parishioners who were quite thrilled to meet them and would be assisting them throughout the week. Cody said that the parishioners were quite interested especially in talking with him and assisting him with his Spanish.
They were greeted by a massive crowd dressed in colorful outfits with palms ready to process through the town on Palm Sunday. Individuals dressed as apostles carried a statue of Jesus riding on a donkey, and one of the town’s elderly women was entrusted with incensing the statue.Cody helped Fr. Jonathan sprinkle holy water on the crowd, and together they processed into the city and to the parish. During Holy Week, Efraín and Cody visited the houses of parishioners who were very generous in feeding them. Many of those they met had colorful lives, and many worked in the United States. They heard stories about how families in Bienvenido relied on fathers, sons and daughters working in the United States to support their families back in Mexico. “Yet no matter how poor the family was or how little they had, they were always so generous in sharing with us,” Cody said. “We shared meals with them, and then we prayed with them. Sharing these little moments and their lives with them meant more than anything.”
Efraín and Cody also led rosaries, going from house to house to pray at their home altars. After each decade of the rosary, the women of the house gathered up flowers, a candle, a picture, and continued on with the group to the next house. After praying at five houses, they returned to the church to celebrate Mass.During weekday Masses, Efraín, Cody, and another missionary volunteer named Saul shared reflections on each day’s corresponding mission theme: for the dead, for immigrants, and for healing. “I was quite nervous about giving a reflection in Spanish to parishioners I had never met before,” Cody said. “But I was pleasantly surprised that I had gotten my message across quite well – so well that an older lady return to the parish later in the day to give me a gift of coffee and eggs.” Her kind gesture touched him, showing him that the Holy Spirit was with them during their mission.In the final days of their mission, they helped the parish decorate and set up programs for the Paschal Triduum. Fr. Matthew Allman joined the three priests to offer an afternoon reconciliation service for the entire parish. Those who were selected as apostles at the start of Holy Week had their feet washed and sat with Jesus in a makeshift jail to show that they were “present with Christ.” Cody and Efraín started Good Friday with the Stations of the Cross, Víacrucis, and reflections on the seven last words of Christ. Fr. Alfonso celebrated the service in the afternoon, complete with a traditional procession of Mary and a reflection on her seven sorrows.
Holy Saturday started at 6:00 am with a procession for the men of the parish, also honoring Mary. Efraín led decorations in the Church, with Cody helping scale the reredos to tie off some of the decorations. The novices and volunteers carried the Paschal candle and stand up to the pantheon, where the parish community was gathered at the second highest point above Bienvenido. They lit the candle and processed down to San Agustin to celebrate the resurrection. In a village 50 minutes away on foot north of Bienvenido, Son Lai and Andrew Tran-Chung celebrated the same celebrations with the people of San Antonio Cuanixtepec. Like Bienvenido, San Antonio Cuanixtepec is also characterized by its geography; houses and roads are built into the hillside.
There’s no easy walk to the church or to the store. For the people in San Antonio Cuanixtepec, the closest market is in Bienvenido. Walking is their main way of getting around – a challenge for those who can’t climb steep hills and mountainous trails.Son and Andrew’s first few days in San Antonio Cuanixtepec were also spent visiting houses, leading catechism classes for kids, and celebrating communion services each night with adults accompanied by reflections because a priest wasn’t present Compared to Bievenido, most of the homebound they visited hadn’t been visited since last year’s missionaries came for Holy Week. Even so, they were able to bring communion to the home-bound, something not done by previous missionary volunteers.
“It was quite an adventure for us to bring communion to them,” Andrew said. They were assigned a guide who spoke both Spanish and Totonac, the local indigenous language, who expertly led them on mountainous trails through thick brush to get to houses hidden deep in the forest. Don Juanito, Doña Lupe, and Doña Yola were the three village elders who wove them through rows of corn and up miles of trails to get to houses in the center of town and high above in hidden settlements.The novices also met with people from various backgrounds during home visits, but what stood out to Andrew was how intertwined the Redemptorist mission to the indigenous is with the North American Conference’s missionary priority to immigrants. Like Bienvenido, a majority of young able-bodied people in San Antonio Cuanixtepec also immigrate illegally to the United States to work. They met with many parents who weren’t able to hike down to the church, but asked them to pray for their children’s safety in the United States.“One night, Son and I ate dinner with a man named Oscar and his family. Over fresh tortillas and soup, he told us of the incredible challenge he faced being thousands of miles away from his family while he worked in North Carolina− from crossing into the U.S. to the incredible mistreatment of migrants by coyotes. But when I asked him if his time in North Carolina was worth it, he set down the knife he was using and responded with a sad but content look on his face, ‘Of course it was.’”By sending money back to Mexico, people like Oscar better their lives. He tells Andrew that his sacrifice when his sons were little allows him and his wife now to be present to their kids. Oscar’s story isn’t unique. San Antonio Cuanixtepec and the other villages surrounding Bienvenido include a mix of dingy wooden shacks with tin roofs and multi-story modern houses. The nicer houses are only possible because family members sent money home from the United States. Even the house that Son and Andrew stayed in was owned by a man who currently lives and works in Southern California.
While a majority of the town is away working in the States, those who stay behind caring for elderly parents or raising children never forget those on the other side of the border. “During our evening communion services, whenever I opened the intercessions for personal petitions, most usually prayed for the same thing: safety for a son working on farm in California, a daughter working in a restaurant in South Carolina, or a husband working as a handyman in Connecticut,” Andrew recounted.The main mission for the novices and missionary volunteers wasn’t just to lead the people of Bienvenido and its surrounding villages in their celebrations of Holy Week, but to accompany them: meet them where they were, with all their worries and sufferings. “Even the basic things, like our afternoon children’s catechism, was more so that the moms could get an hour to themselves,” Andrew explained. Homebound visits and meals with families often meant hiking through overgrown trails to far away houses, but Andrew and Son felt that they learned so much just by hearing people tell them about their lives.In San Antonio Cuanixtepec, the novices relied on the generosity of the people to celebrate Holy Week in a truly communal way. Unlike the organized schedule in Bienvenido, Andrew and Son rallied people together for a smaller procession on Palm Sunday. They joined the community to celebrate a death anniversary with an evening rosary.
On Holy Thursday, the community stayed to keep watch over the Blessed Sacrament after Mass. On Good Friday, San Antonio Cuanixtepec’s Viacrucis was a three-mile trek up and down hills, passing almost every house in the village. The Easter Vigil began with a flame coming down from a tree and setting the fire ablaze to light the Paschal candle. The entire community contributed ideas and participated in the Holy Week celebrations.The novices discovered that it’s not just about giving people the sacraments, celebrating Mass, and helping the faithful with their traditional devotions during Holy Week. It’s about giving people what they need the most − whether that be sharing a table with a family that killed one of their four chickens to feed their guests, or carrying the Paschal candle up to the second highest point in the village. “The best ministry isn’t what’s happening in the Church, it’s at a kitchen table, being present, lending a helping hand, and maybe, eating the best food you’ve ever had,” Andrew concluded.