This morning we attended a funeral mass for our good friend Rev. Grant Gallup, known in Nicaragua as Padre Mauricio. Grant founded the Casa Ave Maria here in Managua and was an excellent example of solidarity and of opening our hearts to the poor. Grant, who would have been 78 in January, passed away last night just as a group of folks was celebrating Thanksgiving a few blocks away at the Casa Ben Linder, where they were in fact giving thanks for Grant and reading aloud a prayer of his that seems particularly appropriate Thanksgiving and the day after:
Our Father and Mother Who Art.
Our Father and Mother,
Who are present in the world and in history,
Hallowed be your name
in all languages and religions.
May the message of your reign come to each of you
indigenous peoples, the humble peoples,
in the language of gospel
and not of the domination systems.
Let your will be fulfilled,
your will of sharing and peace,
for your indigenous peoples,
for the humble peoples,
even for our own society.
Let us live each day in the sisterly solidarity
that produces abundance
and living joyfully together
that all may have bread.
Forgive our massacre of cultures,
and our colonizing evangelism.
And let us not fall into the temptation of fearing to be engaged,
of fearing to offend, of fearing to suffer,
But deliver us from the violence of consumerism,
and the violence of the forces of power and domination.
For Yours is the Future, Yours the Reign
that is Coming,
Yours the Glory and Goodness for ever and ever.
AMEN
(Translated from the Spanish & doxology added, by the Rev. Grant Mauricio Gallup, Casa Ave Maria, Managua, Nicaragua, 1994)
For sermons by Father Grant, you can go to http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/homilygrits/msg00036.html
