{"id":12693,"date":"2025-10-16T10:39:38","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T09:39:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.leedsjp.org.uk\/?p=12693"},"modified":"2026-10-06T09:46:16","modified_gmt":"2026-10-06T08:46:16","slug":"16-oct-sustaining-hope-in-todays-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/c4652100.myzen.co.uk\/jp2026\/2025\/10\/16\/16-oct-sustaining-hope-in-todays-world\/","title":{"rendered":"16 Oct – If you are shepherds…"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\nBy Luis Orlando Perez Jimenez SJ<\/em>

Fr Luis, who led the SPARK retreat day on Saturday, also did an event just for SPARK members on Friday evening \u2013 a \u2018Conversation of Hope\u2019 which was had over a meal at a community centre in Headingley in Leeds.

The focus on Friday evening was to hear from Fr Luis Orlando P\u00e9rez Jim\u00e9nez SJ, who shared how his work as a lawyer at the Jesuit Human Rights Centre in Mexico City had deepened his spirituality and understanding of sustaining hope and building resilience. Fr Luis spoke of how the voices of hundreds of women, whose children have been forcibly taken, are the channels of hope and God\u2019s grace in our world today.\u00a0

\n\"Fr\n(The following is an extract from one of the talks given by Fr Luis Orlando during the SPARK retreat day at Hinsley Hall on 11 October 2025)<\/em>

Over the past sixteen years, more than one hundred and thirty thousand people have gone missing in my country.<\/strong> One hundred and thirty thousand lives \u2014 and behind each of them, a family, a mother, a story. The disappearance of people began to rise sharply when the then-President of Mexico, Felipe Calder\u00f3n, declared a \u201cwar on drugs\u201d in 2006 \u2014 a war that two more presidents have continued. This war has been promoted and financed by the government of the United States.

And what has been the outcome? A country filled with pain, fear, and violence unlike anything seen in modern Mexican history \u2014 and all of it unfolding in what was supposed to be a time of democratic openness.

Those who tend to disappear are poor people, young people, often between sixteen and thirty years old, living in marginalised neighbourhoods. It is happening across the whole country. The groups responsible for these disappearances are of two kinds: people who work for the Mexican state \u2014 police, soldiers \u2014 and members of organised crime. And often, both sides collaborate. They protect one another and, together, maintain a system of almost total impunity.

Hundreds of mothers have come together in groups to search for their loved ones.<\/strong> One of them is Do\u00f1a Mar\u00eda Herrera, whose two sons \u2014 Ra\u00fal and Jes\u00fas Salvador \u2014 disappeared in 2008. While she was still demanding their return, two more \u2014 Gustavo and Luis Armando \u2014 were also taken in 2010.

Now in her seventies, Do\u00f1a Mar\u00eda has spent more than a decade speaking out with unshakable faith in God.

\n\"Dona\nA few years ago, I accompanied her to a meeting with a bishop and several priests. She reminded them of the parable of the Good Shepherd \u2014 the shepherd who leaves his flock to search for the one sheep that is lost.

And then she asked,

\u201cIf you are shepherds, why have you not gone out to look for the sheep who are missing?\u201d<\/strong>

<\/blockquote>There was silence in the room \u2014 a heavy, uncomfortable silence. No one dared to answer. Do\u00f1a Mar\u00eda said,

\u201cGod is the first to go searching. God goes out not knowing where to begin, but still goes. That\u2019s how we started too.\u201d<\/strong>

<\/blockquote>I have reflected deeply on her words. Perhaps through Do\u00f1a Mar\u00eda\u2019s voice \u2014 and through the voices of hundreds of mothers like her \u2014 God is speaking to us, just as He once spoke through the prophets of the old testament.

To \u201csearch,\u201d in their experience, means organising spaces to share knowledge, to learn how to find their missing sons and daughters. These women see themselves as co-workers with the Good Shepherd, searching for His lost sheep.

Through this work, these mothers have moved from distrust to rebuilding social trust, and above all, to sustaining hope.

\n\"Mothers\nI believe the key reason these mothers can keep hope alive is their encounter with God, made real through the presence of people of goodwill \u2014 those who choose to accompany them, to stand by them.

In our extended mass in the afternoon, Fr Luis commented on the Gospel reading, which was the story of the Visitation.

Like Mary, that young woman from Nazareth, who, as the Gospel tells us, \u201cset out as quickly as she could\u201d to visit Elizabeth in the hill country. What a beautiful image.

Mary goes to meet Elizabeth because she is full of God \u2014 full of His Spirit. She moves because she allows God to move within her. In other words, Mary is open to being led by that \u201cSpirit from above.\u201d

And that encounter \u2014 that meeting \u2014 changes everything.

The act of setting out, of letting someone wait for you, already begins to build relationship.

There is a quiet beauty in waiting \u2014 in preparing to receive another person \u2014 and then, the meeting itself: a greeting, a cup of tea, a roof and a table. Nothing extravagant.

Again, the Spirit of God is simple and grounded. It goes straight to what matters most.

Imagine Elizabeth\u2019s joy \u2014 not in gifts or grand gestures, but in Mary\u2019s presence before her. Two women meeting, two friends, their hope resting in God\u2019s promise to transform their lives.

\n\"SPARK\nMary\u2019s prayer \u2014 the Magnificat \u2014 overflows with gratitude. It draws our eyes toward those who suffer, toward those whose faces are hard to meet: the children starving in Gaza, the mothers in Ukraine mourning their sons, many of them now widows.

And when their faces meet ours, what can we say?<\/strong>

What prayer rises from our hearts?<\/strong>

Where is that Spirit from above calling us to go?<\/strong>

\nWe will be publishing the full text of Fr Luis Orlando\u2019s talk as a small downloadable booklet \u2013 keep an eye on our website if this is of interest to you.\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13717,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[28,104,17,238],"tags":[480,456,356,481,60],"class_list":["post-12693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-catholic-social-thought","category-international-development","category-peace","category-racialjustice","tag-good-shepherd","tag-luis-orlando","tag-mexico","tag-mothers-of-the-disappeared","tag-retreat"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c4652100.myzen.co.uk\/jp2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c4652100.myzen.co.uk\/jp2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c4652100.myzen.co.uk\/jp2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c4652100.myzen.co.uk\/jp2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c4652100.myzen.co.uk\/jp2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12693"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/c4652100.myzen.co.uk\/jp2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12693\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19925,"href":"https:\/\/c4652100.myzen.co.uk\/jp2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12693\/revisions\/19925"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c4652100.myzen.co.uk\/jp2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c4652100.myzen.co.uk\/jp2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c4652100.myzen.co.uk\/jp2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c4652100.myzen.co.uk\/jp2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}