Sometimes people kneel to pray. Sometimes people kneel to play: a girl on a sidewalk with a piece of chalk; a boy on a creek bank skipping a stone. Sometimes people kneel to work: a maid cleaning a bathroom floor, a mechanic fixing a flat tire. Other times, people kneel in love: a grandmother planting potatoes in a garden; a mother slipping a shoe on the foot of a toddler; a son visiting the grave of his father.  

Each month, on First Friday, I kneel at the gate of Juanita’s front yard. A sign says, “Beware of Dog,” but Chica wags her tail and I cannot refrain from falling on my knees to pet the litter of pups that scamper from the open hatch of an old van. After scratching their ears, I close the gate, walk pass a chickencoop and rap on a door at the back of the house.

“Pasale!”

Juanita lives in a neighborhood called Little Mexico. I push open the door. An image of Our Lady of Guadalupe greets me from above her bed.

“Padre! Siéntate.”

I take a seat in an overstuffed chair. For a moment, I am back in my grandmother’s bedroom where an image of the Immaculate Conception hung above the dresser. I ask Juanita about the family. Her voice is weak and I struggle to comprehend the details. As we prepare for Holy Communion, Juanita prays the Lord’s Prayer in Spanish. Again, my thoughts drift to my grandmother and the sound of the Angelus she prayed in German before heading to the barn to milk the cows.

Many parishioners of mine hail from villages in Chihuahua. At baptisms and quinceañeras, we share stories about farm life, small towns and Catholic rituals: corn fields blessed in May, rosary processions in November, blessed palms nailed to barn doors in March, neighbors gathering to butcher hogs in February.   

Invariably, the men ask how my family killed the sows and the women want to know how we cooked the meat. We nod at the similarities and smiles grace our faces. I recall the sound of church bells in the distance. I am German. They are Mexican. But our souls are Catholic.

Yet, in the depths of our hearts, all is not well. Stories of prayer and faith, planting and harvesting unite us, yet vast deserts separate my history from theirs. Of these regions we do not speak. The fear is too raw, the graves too shallow.

It is early evening when I return home. I enter the church where candles flicker before the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Her skin is brown. Her eyes are soft. “I am your mother,” she whispers.

Her presence falls like rain on a furrowed field. I kneel, shoulders hunched like a mechanic, back bent like a farmhand, fingers splayed on the floor like a maid.

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