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Page 2 • Faith Today
Photos by James Baca
By Joe Michael Feist
NC News Service
From time to time, James Baca
cruises Denver’s back streets and
seamy neighborhoods. He drives
slowly through poor sections of
the city, sections like the one he
grew up in, searching for those
who have fallen between the
cracks, lost hope or been
abandoned.
And when he finds them, he
photographs them.
Baca, the award-winning staff
photographer for the Denver
Catholic Register, says he feels a
“sense of mission” about his
profession.
“I believe I’m here for a pur
pose,” he said in a recent inter
view. “I love people and the
church is all about people. If
we’re doing a story on some poor
family and my pictures are used
and some good comes out of it,
that makes all the difference.”
Baca, 35, was raised in an im
poverished Denver household. “I
have a soft spot in my heart for
people who are down and out,
maybe because of the way I grew
up,” he said.
So, as part of his work, Baca
consciously seeks out the disad
vantaged and the poverty-stricken
to tell their story in the Register.
“I’m out trying to find the guy
living in a box under a bridge. I
know where the bridges are and
I’m not scared to go down there.
I’m not intimidated.”
A few years back, Baca
discovered a woman, her three
children and a puppy living in a
car. The woman, recently widow
ed, had been evicted from her
apartment.
“She was devastated and crying
to me,” Baca recalls. “She didn’t
know what to do. It was very,
very hard for me to ask if I could
take some pictures of these people
at their worst. But I said (the
paper’s readers) need to see this,
they need to be aware. After talk
ing a long time, they let me.”
Baca, who has worked for
Denver’s Catholic newspaper for
nearly five years, feels he must
“proceed with caution” when
working on such an assignment.
“I never want to make someone
By Father John Castelot
NC News Service
1. Jesus was involved with flesh
and blood people who were
wedded by nature to the world
around them.
On one occasion some people
brought a deaf man with a speech
impediment to Jesus. They begged
Jesus to lay hands on the man
(Mark 7:32).
Jesus could have gone ahead
and cured the man while telling
the people to forget their gestures
like the imposition of hands. In
stead he acceded to their request
and, in fact, went beyond it.
“He put his fingers into the
man’s ears and, spitting, touched
his tongue; then he looked up to
heaven and emitted a groan. He
said to him, ‘Ephphatha!” (that is,
‘Be opened!’).”
Why all these gestures, signs
uncomfortable,” he said. “I want
to let them know I’m not there to
embarrass them in any way.”
Baca said he usually takes time
to get to know his subjects. “We
sit down, have a cup of coffee
and talk.” Then, he added, he
tries to capture the essence of the
person on film.
When the pictures of the family
living in a car appeared, they
were “flooded with checks” and
offers of assistance, Baca said. Be
ing able to tell these kinds of
photo stories, he added, is what
and words when Jesus could simp
ly have willed the man’s cure?
Part of the answer is found in the
second chapter of the New Testa
ment letter to the Hebrews: “Sure
ly he did not come to help angels,
but rather the children of
Abraham” (that is, human beings).
He entered into their world
with its language, its symbolism,
its people.
2. God revealed himself in the
very earthy history of his people.
In fact, to accomplish his pur
poses God used ordinary,
sometimes scandalously ordinary,
human beings: “God chose those
whom the world considers absurd
to shame the wise; he singled out
the weak of this world to shame
the strong” (1 Corinthians 1:27).
In similar fashion, God chose
everyday things of the world as
signs and vehicles of his presence:
makes his “the best job in town
photography wise. ’ ’
“Living in Colorado,” Baca
noted, “I could take all the pretty
pictures in the world.” But, he
quickly added, he prefers the
satisfaction that comes from
“making people aware” of the
sometimes desperate needs of the
poor.
(Feist is associate editor of
Faith Today.)
things like water and bread and
oil — and the wood of the cross.
Actually, a sacrament is basically
a sign and vehicle of God’s
presence and power. And the
whole sacramental system is
summed up in one key verse:
“The Word became flesh” (John
1:14).
Absolutely speaking, God could
have spoken through some
spiritual, mysterious inner voice
— and he sometimes has done
this. But the most effective way
for him to speak to flesh and
blood people was through one
who shared their humanity to the
full and spoke their own language:
Jesus.
God is encountered through the
humanity of Jesus.
3. Everything God created
reflects in some way his power,
his beauty.
w
Images of the world that Jesu