After my interview with the reporter about the coronovirus, I was
thinking about our Confirmation students. Our bishop had given me the date of
April 25th to come to North Java and confer the sacrament on our
young people. I was thinking that sometimes in preparation, the leaders would
take the kids to a homeless shelter and it was somewhere downtown in a really
rough area. I would think that it was a really uncomfortable experience,
awkward experience, difficult experience. The teens would go to feed the men
their dinner and then sit with the men and talk to them. And I think it would
be profound, and I think it would be disturbing, but it was a really good piece
of their education.
It's impossible to read the Gospels and not recognize that Jesus
loved poor people and that he had an enormous compassion for our humanity.
Usually when we talk about poor people, we think about people who don't have
stuff or don't have food or don't have money, but the reality is that we're all
poor in our own way. We're all dealing with a form or a type of poverty. Very
often, we're unaware of it, of course. But the Gospel challenges us to say when
Jesus heals the blind man—the Gospel challenges us to say: okay, in what ways
am I the blind man? When Jesus cures the deaf person, it challenges us to think
about in what ways am I the deaf person. What have I been deaf to in my life?
And when Jesus cures the lepers, he challenges us to say: okay, in what ways am
I a leper, or in what ways have I made other people lepers, socially, politically,
economically, or in any other way shape or form?
And so, the Gospel is an invitation to explore our own poverty,
and it's by exploring our own poverty and understanding our own poverty that we
develop compassion for everybody else in their particular type of poverty
because we realize one of the most radical truths of Jesus's teachings, which
is the idea that we're all in this together and there can't be some winners and
some losers.
Lord, I pray for all my Sunshine Friends whether they are isolated
or quarantined or reaching out to their neighbors to make sure that they are
safe. We all in this together. Give us your spirit of compassion and generosity
that will make all humanity reflect your love for one another.
