Readings: Jeremiah 17:5-8; Psalm, 1 Corinthians 15:12, 16-20; Luke 6:17, 20-26
As the picture to the left is may be difficult to see who is blessed and who are to be lamented based on their state in life. Likewise, it may be difficult to comprehend what Jesus is saying in today’s Gospel to the crowd gathered on the level ground. I have to admit that I struggled to understand the words, “Blessed are you who are poor, for the Kingdom of God is yours.” (Luke 6:20b) I did not know any poor people growing up in a suburb southwest of Chicago. `
On occasion I did see those I judged to be poor, but only when we traveled outside of our well-kept neighborhood. I recall, when I was only 12 years old, a trip we made to Chicago to see the Thanksgiving Day Parade. As we drove through the Southside of Chicago on the way to the parade I remember being shocked at the rundown conditions in the neighborhoods. The streets seemed so dreary to me and I wondered why the people I saw looked so forlorn and poor. I asked my father why they were so poor and why they had to live in these poor neighborhoods. I don’t remember his answer, but I remember it didn’t satisfy me. I was going to have to wait a long time to understand why people live in poverty, and even longer to understand why they are blessed.
Fast forward to 1985 when I was 32 years old. I was in the Delaware Air National Guard, Civil Engineering Squadron. Our two-week training deployment that year was to Soto Cano Air Base near Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras. Honduras is the poorest of all the Central American countries. Its poverty rates second only to Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. In a small village not far from the Capitol we constructed a culvert across a stream and built a wall around a schoolyard. Families lived in one or two-room mud-brick houses with a piece of corrugated metal for a roof. The floors were packed earth, and there was little in the way of furniture. Meals were cooked outside on the top of an oil drum converted into a crude stove that burned wood. Even though they had very little they were ever ready to share their meager food with us (not knowing we brought our own).
The middle weekend in our two-week deployment was Easter. I traveled by bus with other Catholic members of my unit to attend Easter Services in St. Michael the Archangel Cathedral. On the way there we passed many people walking in groups from the surrounding villages to attend Easter services in the Capitol. I was quite surprised to see them dressed in clean white shirts pants and dresses, and I wondered where they could keep them looking so nice given their living conditions. I remember in particular an old man walking his donkey with a small boy on its back. It is hard to explain in words what I felt when I saw this man, with a boy and his donkey. Truly this was the image of the deep faith of these people and it humbled me. How much does my faith depend on being safe, well fed, and warm?
At first, I thought that maybe there was not enough work for people to earn a living. They were dirt poor and lived in squalid conditions as I had never seen before. Their children showed signs of malnutrition. Later I discovered that I was wrong about the lack of work, most of the adults worked on fruit plantations operated by companies like Dole, Del Monte or Chiquita. I wondered why couldn’t their children eat some of the fruit their parents grew and harvested for the American market? I came to learn that poverty had more to do with corruption, injustice, and greed than it had to do with conditions beyond our control. This experience had a huge impact on me.
One impact was that I felt that I was being called to a deeper faith, a faith that included more than going to church on Sunday and putting a few dollars in the collection to care for the building I worshipped in each week. The kind of faith that the poor campesinos exhibited when they were ready to share their food with strangers even though they did not know if they would have enough for tomorrow. Prayer was more than talking to God about my wants and needs. Prayer also meant speaking out for the rights of others. Marching for the right to life to be born also included marching for the dignity of the human being for their whole life and in places far from my own country. I better understood the root cause of poverty, but what could Jesus possibly mean by saying, “Blessed are you who are now weeping, for you will laugh.” (Luke 6:21b) I was going to have to wait another 20 years for the answer to this question. After being assigned to St. Andrew the Apostle Parish
Fast forward to 2014 when I was assigned to St. Andrew the Apostle. I got involved with the parish mission to the O.L.P.H. Orphanage in Jérémie, Haiti called Grow Haiti’s Children (GHC). Fr. Gary Pierre Louis a parish priest in Jérémie founded the Orphanage. Karen Kohl and Fr. John Coleman, then pastor of St. Andrew’s, founded GHC. In 2015 I went on my first trip with GHC in 2015 to visit the children of the orphanage.
The year I went on that first trip we were taking shoes that the Boy Scouts of the parish had collected for the children and we had the privilege of giving them to the children. I will never forget how the boys and girls spontaneously broke into song when they saw the shoes. Their joy surprised me. How could children so poor, who had suffered the loss of their parents have such deep and spontaneous joy? They had lost everything in the earthquake of 2010, family, home, and what meager possessions they had in this world. Then it occurred to me – they no longer had anything to lose. Why did I not have this kind of joy?
Sure I am happy and satisfied in life, but the deep joy of the children and their laughter had nothing to do with material possessions. They were happy not so much because of the shoes, but because we cared enough to come to visit them in this forgotten place in the world. Then I thought…
But woe to you who are rich,
Luke 6:24-25
for you have received your consolation.
But woe to you who are filled now,
for you will be hungry.
Woe to you who laugh now,
for you will grieve and weep.
It has finally dawned on me why these Haitian children have joy and the campesinos of Honduras have such deep faith. I have seen it first hand and I believe it is Jesus that I have encountered. When you have done this to the least of my brothers you have done it to me. (Matthew 25: 31-46) Do you believe this?
Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe.” Thomas answered and said to him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you come to believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.”
John 20:27-29
You must be logged in to post a comment.