Fr. Larry Dowling, Friends of PACTPAN Board Member

“Receive it. This is my Body given up for YOU!”  “Receive it! This is my Blood poured out for YOU!”   “Do this in memory of me!”  (paraphrase of Luke 22:17-19, the words of consecration at Mass).

These words express Jesus’ willing offering of His very life, His living flesh, and flowing lifeblood to those who claim and actively live discipleship in Him.

They also signify the freedom of Spirit which allows him to freely give his body and blood to his captors because he knew within His flesh and flowing through His veins and arteries was the eternal and life-giving Spirit of the Father that can never die. Jesus knew and gave himself freely so that others might know His passion, His deep trust in the Father, in His very being knowing that as long as His Spirit was connected to the Father that His Spirit would never die.

Sadly, there are people in every part of our world, innocent girls, boys, women and men whose bodies are taken by coercion or force to live in servitude, enslaved for the use of sex, labor and, at worst, killed for their organs. They do not give their lives freely. Many are looking for a way to make a good life for themselves and their families and are tricked into the horrors that accompany being trafficked as a commodity to be used, abused and even harvested.

Those who traffic and benefit from trafficking are like the authorities who captured Jesus, thinking that by extinguishing his physical body that they could extinguish his spirit, his message that had already been planted in the hearts and minds of his disciples. Those who traffic are Judas’s or any so-called ‘Christians’ who get paid ‘forty pieces of silver’ for violating the dignity and sacredness of God’s children, for violating a precious member of the Body of Christ. 

So what is our response as the Body and Blood of Christ, His ears, voice, heart, mind, hands, feet, to these atrocities? PACTPAN, the Pan-African Catholic Theology and Pastoral Network, has been addressing this ages-old crime with active outreach. Sr. Leonida Katunge, with the help of 23,000 volunteers in 38 African countries, is raising awareness among the people on this epidemic of human trafficking, and most importantly searching for people who are being trafficked or have been trafficked to offer necessary supports for their physical, emotional and spiritual well-being.

The last words of Jesus during the institution of the Eucharist are “Do this in memory of me.” (Luke 22:19) This is not just a mandate to repeat the Eucharistic ritual during the Mass, but to repeat it in each moment, each breathing out of daily life: Jesus is saying, “Bind yourself to me through this sacred meal. I break open my life. I pour out my lifeblood for YOU! Go, now, and do the same for others - for the bruised, broken, entombed, trafficked, demeaned, disregarded, discarded, innocent victims, the innocent pawns of political and religious authorities – the suffering Christ in all of them. This, this, I implore you to do… “In memory of me!”

Get involved in the anti-trafficking/ human dignity work of PACTPAN

Email us: panafricaththeopastne@gmail.com