The Holy Cross Mission Center is pleased to share written reflections from the Holy Cross participants in the 2024 Ganguly Exchange, an eight-week international ministry opportunity available to the U.S. Province’s men in formation. Their stories from Bangladesh, Kenya, Mexico, and Peru offer a window into the Congregation’s missionary charism.

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“When St. André Gives You Crutches”

By Christopher Mulholland, C.S.C.

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When I arrived in Peru to teach middle school English at Fe y Alegria 25, a Holy Cross school in the district of San Juan de Lurigancho, Lima, I didn’t expect that I myself would be learning a new set of Spanish vocabulary: Esguince, sprain. Yeso, cast. Muletas, crutches.

Sure enough, midway through my 7 weeks in Peru, I found myself in the back of a taxi going to a health clinic to get my ankle checked out. I had landed badly while playing volleyball at the Peyton Center, the headquarters of Holy Cross Family Ministries in Lima and the site of many sports competitions—and sports injuries.

The following week was the hardest week I spent in Peru. It wasn’t because I had too much work to do, but because I knew there was so much going on and I had to stay behind and rest. At 6:30 a.m. I prayed with the Holy Cross community before they left for the school. At 7:00 I knew the students in segundaria would be trickling in with their Fe y Alegria 25 sweatsuits. By 10:15 they would be heading to recess, at which time I would usually stand in the schoolyard and field questions in Spanish and English. “Yes, I am from the U.S.” “No, I don’t know Mr. Beast.” “No, I don’t have kids. I am a seminarian, which means I’m studying to be a priest. But I do have you all—you are the spiritual children that God has given me.”

At 1:00 the older students would be leaving while the K-6 grades packed in by the entrance, ready to storm the campus with gleeful screams at the drop of the rope barrier. They would be using the very same classrooms that the older students had occupied that morning. Meanwhile, my fellow CSC’s would return to the house for lunch and tell me how the morning went. As for myself, I was still on the couch where they left me.

Thankfully, I was able to return to the classroom the following week. As I crutched around the school, the questions shifted from ¿Qué pasa? to ¿Qué pasó? while I learned to tell the story of my injury again and again. It was tricky getting around, but I was overjoyed to be back with my students.

The greatest blessing of my recovery was going through physical therapy at the St. André Clinic, located adjacent to the main chapel and parish center for Our Lord of Hope parish. What a comfort it was to be lying on a hospital bed in a foreign country only to look up and see St. André on the wall—a familiar friend in an unfamiliar place. He was in the business of taking people’s crutches away, but this time I received my muletas at his clinic. Regardless, the healing was well on its way.

I scheduled my physical therapy to end just before the 7:00 pm daily mass, so I would crutch right out of the clinic and literally into the chapel sanctuary. Even while still in the treatment room, I could hear masses for the deceased being celebrated in the chapel. As I listened to the Gospel being read, it struck me: my body and my soul were both being healed at once.

I had come to serve alongside Holy Cross in this Mission territory, but instead I became the patient. Yet, isn’t that how it often goes? Just as we ourselves stand to learn much from those whom we are called to teach, we also find healing from those whom we set out to serve.

Learn more about Holy Cross in Peru

Published: December 10, 2024