News

By John Jalsevac

Student Missionary Cassidy BugosTIJUANA, Mexico, June 30, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – “There was a little nun in Tijuana who had very wise eyes. Their glance was sharp and critical, and the eyebrows over them arched frequently, but the light in them was unmistakable. It was the light of eyes used to gazing in love,” writes college junior Cassidy Bugos in today’s beautiful and deeply insightful special report.

This past March Bugos, along with a number of her classmates, volunteered with the Missionaries of Charity in the poverty-stricken city of Tijuana Mexico. For her and the others it was a powerful experience, working intimately with the Missionaries of Charity nuns in the allies and cesspools of the city, ministering to the poorest of the poor.

One nun in particular, a native of India, Bugos says, left her and her classmates with much to think about, especially in herÂanswer toÂBugos’ question about the differences between the East and the West. Those differences, said the nun, who never revealed her name, run deep, and on comparisonÂreveal much about the corruption, vacuity and despairÂthat lies in theÂvery heart of Western materialism.

Similarly, when LifeSiteNews.com’s managing director, Steve Jalsevac, recently traveled to the state of Kerala in South India with his son Luke,Âhe came face to face with some of the starkest of these differences between the East and the West. He reported on some of these in a series of special reports on his trip.

In particular, he says,Âhe learned that in south India the faith is vitally alive, the spiritual fervor of the people impressive, rich and imitable. But he also observed that despite the spiritual orthodoxy of the people, powerful Western population control and other social propagandaÂhas been increasinglyÂinfluencing them, threatening not only the deep-rooted natural joy of the highly spiritual culture, but also the very survival of its population.

When Steve returned to Canada he was struck by theÂnear barbarity ofÂNorth AmericanÂculture compared to the gentleness, courtesy andÂdignified appearanceÂof almost everyone he met in Kerala.ÂThough there is greater physical poverty in the East, it became clear to Jalsevac that it is the spiritual and moral poverty in the West that is perhaps the world’s most pressing problem, especially as it threatens to spread throughout the world by way of media and international organizations.

Though she traveled to Tijuana to help with the poorest of the poor, says Bugos, what the nun with the wise eyes revealed to her in a powerful way—and in a way that Bugos skillfully transfers to her readers—was that the truly poorest people can be found in the wealthiest cities in North America, and that though some are called to minister to the physically poor in the East, the most difficult and pressing missionary work is in the West; it is the ministry to the West’s despairing and Godless.Â

** Read today’s touching Special Report: An Encounter in Tijuana: https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/jun/06063001.html

See also Steve Jalsevac’s LifeSiteNews Special Reports from India enter “Kerala”
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/jun/060612a.html