On the same evening, the outreach committee of Mt. Irenaeus, with friars Lou McCormick , Joe Kotula and Dan Hurley , presented an Evening of Re-Creation at St. John's Church in Olean. Larry Orsini, a faculty member at St. Bonaventure University, his wife Bonnie, and Agnes Brush from Scio, N.Y., led the evening of prayer. I am told that in most, if not all the poor Christian countries of our world, there is a cultural identification with the sufferings and death of Jesus Christ. The most significant holy day is Good Friday. Their God, the God of the poor and outcast, came down to earth, became human, suffered and died.
People have first-hand experience with the passion and death.
In the churches of the 'haves,' if they come at all, the suffering and death has to be symbolic. We ritualize the pain and agony. THEY THEN MOVE ON to lives of power and privilege and glory in the Resurrection. The poor need not symbolize nor ritualize the suffering. The people of Kensington and Camden just open the window.