Loving Poor Treasures

When we love, we choose to be humbled.  As we give of ourselves, we let ourselves be humbled, since we are choosing someone else over ourselves.  When we allow ourselves to be humbled, God gives us the grace to love our neighbor, including those among us who are marginalized.  By the grace of God, we can come to see how persons living on the fringes of society are more like us than we had thought, and thus come to love and cherish them.  Thus, since we come to see we are more like others than we had thought, we necessarily give up our conceptions of ourselves so that we can become who God has always intended us to be.  We let go of our images of ourselves so we can see God made us in His own image.  We relinquish our false ideas of ourselves so we can love.  As we empty ourselves of our untrue conceptions of ourselves, God can fill us up with the love* we have seen our brothers and sisters demonstrate for us over the centuries.  

Sometimes we might think this love is out of our reach.  Yet God gives us opportunities to open our hearts and choose this love.  

We can think that saints have nothing to do with us.  We can decide that we are far removed from them.  In addition to saints inspiring us through their outstanding examples, they point out to us to consider what we value, and to act accordingly.  Thus, although at first they might seem distant and unreachable, by pondering their choices, we can come to realize they are closer to us than we had thought, since like they have done, we too must decide everyday who and what are important to us.  Through our choices, we can embrace the types of people the saints treasured.  In how we opt to act, we can show we wish to love others like the saints have done, and thus be close with the saints, honoring their memory.  

Today we remember Saint Lawrence as we celebrate his feast day on this particular date.  He was a deacon in the city of Rome in the third century.  He was charged with giving aid to those in need.  Saint Lawrence loved impoverished people so much that he gave all of the money in his care to poor persons.  He even sold expensive items to be able to give more to those who were indigent.   

Since Saint Lawrence was one of those in charge of funds for the church, Roman officials ordered him to bring them the treasure of the church.  As the priest explained during his sermon today at Mass, in reply to this demand, Saint Lawrence said it would take him a few days to gather this treasure.  Then he brought disabled, blind, ill and needy individuals to the Roman officials.  Saint Lawrence maintained that these outcasts were the treasure of the church.  

In response, the Roman authorities killed Saint Lawrence.  He died while he was tied to a grill set above a fire so that he was roasted alive.  Although Saint Lawrence suffered much as he died, God gave him grace.  He had been so strengthened by God that he made light of his plight.  At one point he told those torturing him to turn him over because he was done on the side that had been cooking.  

Saint Lawrence received grace from God.  Saint Lawrence had humbled himself by cherishing those who were impoverished.  Those who are humble receive grace from God.**  

Those of humble heart are close to those who are least among us.  Jesus told us that whatever we do to those who are least among us, we do to Him.***  People who are humble welcome Jesus into their hearts.  Jesus stands at the doors of our hearts and knocks.  If we open to Him, He can come into our hearts and dine with us.****  The poor stand at our doors and knock.  Jesus, in the poor, stands at our doors and knocks.  If we let the poor in when they knock, they can come in and dine with us.  If we let them into our homes, we let Jesus into our hearts.  

Last week a young couple, interested in volunteering here at the Catholic Worker House, came here to the house, and, over coffee, said that they have let homeless persons sleep in their home.  This man and this woman have opened their hearts to those who have no place to rest their heads.  They have welcomed impoverished individuals into their home, and thus have embraced Jesus.  They have clearly demonstrated that they consider those who are poor as treasures to delicately and gently treat.  

Jesus told us, "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be."*****  Seeing who and what we value, there our hearts reside, in community with them.  As we demonstrate to others that we appreciate them, we welcome them into our hearts.  We can embrace those who are poor and treat them with dignity, helping them to see that they are treasures to be valued, rather than treating them as if they are trash to be discarded.  We can choose to show warmth and tenderness to those who are often cast aside, and thus truly love them.  

If we truly love, we will allow ourselves to be humbled.  As we consent to being humbled, God will give us the grace we need to love our neighbor.  At times in our lives, we might misperceive our neighbor and mistakenly believe she is nothing like us.  Through the grace of God, we can come to have much compassion for our neighbor, once we recognize that our neighbor is much more like us than we had thought.  Seeing our neighbor is more like us than we had thought, we come to love our neighbor as ourselves.******  As we open our hearts to love, we open our hearts to God.  As we seek to always do the will of God by always loving our neighbor, we come to love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength.*******  Amen.  

* Romans 5:5 
** 1 Peter 5:5; James 4:6 
*** Matthew 25:40 
**** Revelation 3:20 
***** Matthew 6:21; Luke 12:34 
****** Matthew 22:39; Mark 12:31; Luke 10:27; Leviticus 19:18; Romans 13:9; Galatians 5:14 
******* Deuteronomy 6:5; Deuteronomy 10:12; Matthew 22:37; Mark 12:30; Luke 10:27 

God Calling Us

When we listen to God, we feel the love of God.  If we accept who God is calling us to be, we feel great joy.  If we become who God has always intended us to be, we become our real selves.  Upon following the will of God, we welcome God into our hearts, and thus welcome love into our hearts.*  Love reigns in hearts which are fully open to God.  

At times God calls us in ways we can hear with the ears of our bodies.  At other points God speaks to us in ways which resonate deep in our souls.  

Yesterday when I was walking up to the church for Mass, the church bells were ringing.  I heard not only the reverberating volume of the sonorous bells vibrating against my eardrums.  I also felt echoing in my soul how I had been previously called to prayer by resonating bells.  

I was reminded of when I was traveling in Europe, right after I had finished serving in the Peace Corps in Morocco.  At one point during those travels in Europe, I found a church by following the sound of the tolling of the church bells.  

Yesterday as I approached the church, I thought too of when I lived at the hermitage in Big Sur.  In that Benedictine monastic community, where I thought I was going to become a monk, the church bell sounds before each Mass and each recitation of the Divine Office, in which Psalms are sung and spoken.  The monks, upon hearing the church bell, proceed to the church for Mass or the Divine Office.  They do their best both to hear the call and to follow it.  

We can be guided by what we hear.  God directs us too through the Holy Spirit speaking to us deep within us.  

God is calling out to us.  As Jesus told us, anyone who has ears should listen.**  When we listen, and submit to God's will, and obediently follow the calling God has ordained for us, we find true joy, for then we find our true selves, and become who God has always meant us to be.  As we live out our vocations, we become who God made us to be.  If we become who God intended us to be, we embrace God, and feel love, for God is love.***  As we feel the love of God, we feel joy.  In finding this joy, we are brought on our way back home to God.  

* Romans 5:5  ** Matthew 11:15; Matthew 13:9; Mark 4:9; Luke 8:8 
*** 1 John 4:8,16 

Waste Not Tears

We are all faced over and over with the decision of whether or not we will love.  We all choose our relationship with pain.  We all decide whether we embrace suffering or reject it.  In what we accept or deny, we determine whether or not we love.  

We can cry out of hopeless desperation, feeling frantic, and convinced that all is lost.  Or we can profoundly weep out of great love for others.  

We can let tears fall from our eyes without realizing their value.  Or we can weep offering our tears as prayers to God.  

All we send out from our being echoes out into the universe.  As a tear falls from your eye, if you offer it as a humble prayer to God, when it drops into the liquid lake of spiritual solidarity we share, you can implicitly offer that tear to help others.  Your tearful prayers are effective when they are offered as the basis of humble and earnest prayer.  When such humble, ardent tears of yours hit the liquid lake of spiritual community we share, these tears send out ripples of love across that surface.  Thus through such tears you can seek to strengthen your spiritual brothers and sisters.  

I am not merely speaking in theoretical terms here.  Ever since earlier this week, when a dear homeless friend who I'll once again here call "Sally" shared with me how she views tears as liquid prayers, her statement of spiritual insight has been echoing in my soul.  Like a drop of water that falls into a pond and causes ripples outward, so her tender spiritual musing, coming into contact with my ears, has been echoing in my soul.  
Despite the struggle, Sally has chosen not to let her agonizing experiences dominate how she responds to life.  As I have mentioned in prior blog posts, Sally has endured domestic violence.  Despite having been hit hard many times by multiple men, Sally refuses to be enslaved by the pain she has felt.  Instead she offers up her tears to God.  Interwoven with her sensitivity and fragility, she also displays a courageous and admirable tenacity, and so she sends out a strong message of faith, hope and love, that pain can be the basis of a beautiful transformation of one's spirit.   

Knowing, then, that we can consent to our suffering being transformed into the joy that emerges out of service of others, we can come to experience a radical alteration of how we feel pain, see pain, and respond to pain.  Aware that God works all for the good of those who love Him,* we come to realize that even anguish can lead to joy, if we seize upon such opportunities to petition God.  Thus in all we experience we can be joyous,** if all we do is for the praise, glory and honor of God.  

Conscious that all we experience presents us chances to glorify God by assenting to call upon Him so He may show us His great love always, we come to give thanks always for all things.***  As we come to express such gratitude at all times, God comes to give us a deep, abiding and enduring peace, as, feeling His love, Jesus comes to abide in us, and we in Him.****  

Let us embrace every opportunity we have, then, including in the midst of our tears, to pray constantly,***** give thanks for all things always, and thus love God and love our neighbor.  Thus we come to live a life of love.  Amen.  

* Romans 8:28 
** 1 Thessalonians 5:16 
*** 1 Thessalonians 5:18 
**** John 15:4-7,9-10
***** 1 Thessalonians 5:17 

Presently Loving Others

It turns out I'm going to stay here at the Redwood City Catholic Worker House.  A few months ago the other Catholic Workers here told me they'd been more pleased with my work than when we'd previously spoken months earlier about my work and about whether or not I'd stay here.  Consequently, they said I could keep living and working here long-term.  

Larry, who founded the Redwood City Catholic Worker House dozens of years ago, wondered if I'd been throwing myself more into the work simply because I'd become more comfortable and because I had relaxed.  In our work, we pick up donations, including of food and clothing and toiletries, and people come here to the Catholic Worker House and get what they need.  Apparently I have been immersing myself more in this work, although I haven't been aware of any change in myself.  

Susan noted how I've been connecting with homeless folks and other persons who are especially in need here in Redwood City.  She talked about how homeless folks come to our front porch to get items that are donated and left there, and how they know me.  

Both Larry and Susan were receptive to my continuing to live and work here at the Catholic Worker House.  They expressed how they felt it could be beneficial if I were to stay.  

I've felt and heard the gratitude my homeless friends and my other impoverished friends have shown to us Catholic Workers here.  I enjoy when they give thanks, and I feel their thankfulness is a reward, but their gratitude is not the reason I do this work.  We are to serve our neighbor because we are to love our neighbor as ourselves,* as Jesus has instructed us to do.  

In the love I feel for them, and in their appreciation of our presence and our ministry, I find indications that love is blooming in their hearts.  Love can bloom in our hearts if we welcome every little chance we get to plant little seeds of love in our lives.  Saint Therese of Lisieux was named The Little Flower, for she had this little way of doing little loving acts for others.  In the little acts of love we can strive to perform for others, and in joyous gestures of thanks people give us in return, we can see the fruits of love flowering out of the little seeds of love that have been planted in each others' hearts.  

And so I cannot help but suspect that I am where God wishes me to be.  God calls us to the duty of the present moment.  Thus the Jesuit priest Jean-Pierre de Caussade counsels us to open our hearts to what we are being called to do in the present.  Indeed, when you embrace the duty of the present moment, and love your neighbor who is right in front of you, you please God.  

Sometimes in various ways we can find surprising this duty that has been placed in front of us.  We can become blinded to what God is asking us to do if we become too attached to our own notions of ourselves.  If we are not detached from our own conceptions of ourselves, we are not opening ourselves up to God to allow ourselves to conceive what God wants to bring to birth through us.  

We can come to overvalue realizations we've had about ourselves in the midst of discernment, such that we can unwittingly let such knowledge about ourselves come to dominate us and unduly influence our decisions.  We do well to temper our self-knowledge against the backdrop of our current circumstances, in the context of where we currently find ourselves.  Right now, who are we being asked to love?  As we love our neighbor, we witness the fruits of that love in the joy we feel.  Love and joy are two signs that we are accurately discerning our vocation, which is what God is calling each of us to do.  

We do well to try to cultivate gardens of love in our hearts.  We can evaluate the health of what is growing in our hearts by means of the joy we feel.  

Thus we can check our relying too much on our self-knowledge, and we can prevent ourselves from letting it drive our actions too strongly, by looking at the love and joy in our hearts.  The love and joy in our hearts is threatened by the selfishness that our egos tend to inflict upon ourselves and on others.  We should not discard our self-knowledge, but also we should not let it control our discernment so much that we use it as an excuse to ignore what God is calling us to do right now.  

As I'd mentioned in a previous blog post, I'd come to find that I do better where there is more structure, and when I am specifically directed what to do.  Yet I've also found that we do well when we don't cling rigidly to our expectations of what we think our ministry is supposed to look like.  Yes, I do well with structure and direction; yet even though I know I have these tendencies, I don't have to be closely directed in a highly structured environment.  Yet I should be conscious of these tendencies, and let these insights influence how I structure my day.  If I am obedient to the duty of the present moment, then I can find the direction I crave by lovingly serving my neighbor when she asks me to do so.  

So, in time, I have been coming to discover that I find the direction I seek coming directly from my neighbor.  The Holy Spirit speaks to us through others.  When we love and serve our neighbor, we submit to the promptings of the Holy Spirit.  As we embrace the duty to give lovingly what our neighbor needs right now, we obey the will of God.  

And so, submitting to the demands of the present, and obediently acquiescing to what God is asking me to do now, I find the direction I seek.  As I open my heart to give the love that my neighbor requests of me, my day becomes structured by what I find the Holy Spirit asking me, through my neighbor, to do for my neighbor.  

And so I am here.  I do not know how long I will be here.  Indefinitely I will be here.  There is no clear indication that the Holy Spirit is guiding me elsewhere.  In contrast, I feel community and connection and warmth and love with these homeless and other needy people here.  I am grateful to God that I can be with them here.  And so I embrace these lovely opportunities with these people in need right now, who are right in front of me.  Amen.  

* Matthew 22:39; Mark 12:31; Luke 10:27; Leviticus 19:18; Romans 13:9; Galatians 5:14 

Learning From Littleness

Here in the community of the Catholic Worker House, we learn from each other partly through the stories we share with each other.  We learn from hearing how others have grown.  

This morning another Catholic Worker and I were on our way to pick up a donation of food.  While we were in the car, he was telling me about how he brought his daughter, when she was only a few years old, to a monastery.  For much of the visit, the little girl was wearing a miniature wedding veil.  At one point when she was wearing the veil, one of the nuns was teaching her one of the tasks done at the monastery.  A photo was snapped of the small child performing her work, thoroughly enjoying it.  In the picture, the young girl is full of glee, overflowing with joy and happiness as she went about her work.  

This morning her father was relating to me how the nuns took her as an example.  The nuns had been consciously aspiring to live each moment with the joy and spontaneity of a child, yet simultaneously with the wisdom and knowledge of an adult.  For years to come the nuns referred back to the little girl as an exemplar of how to live with a spirit of joy and spontaneity, like a little child.  

The nuns saw that the child provided a model for them to follow.  She simply set herself to the job before her, and joyfully reveled in what she had to do in that moment.  

We can learn much from those who are little.  We do well when we do not take ourselves too seriously.  Of course we should not forget what we have learned, but we should also have the humility to realize that there is much we do not know.  We are called to have the humility to be willing to learn from little children, for as Jesus told us, the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these.*  

When we worry about nothing, but out of great love of God, with much faith in Him, simply trust in Him, we are filled with joy.  We feel such abundant joy when we throw all our cares to Him, and trust completely in Him.  

We are called to depend totally upon God, just as little children completely rely on their parents.  We must become like little children if we are to enter the Kingdom of God.**  

We can grow by becoming little.  The one who humbles himself will be raised up.***  When we have the humility to learn from others, even from little children, we are opening our hearts to others and what they have to teach us.  When we consent to learn from others, we open our hearts to them, and thus love them.  

As we love others, we grow closer to them, and thus closer to God.  Let us humble ourselves, learn, and love, and return back home to God.  Amen.  

* Matthew 19:14; Mark 10:14; Luke 18:16 
** Matthew 18:3; Mark 10:15; Luke 18:17 
*** Matthew 23:12; Luke 14:11; Luke 18:14 

Humility Gives Help

From time to time I remember a certain day from a couple of months ago.  I was outside the van I use to transport supplies.  I had unloaded some cardboard boxes onto the sidewalk since I was going to discard them.  

A well-dressed, carefully manicured stranger was walking down the sidewalk.  She was absorbed in her phone.  She didn't even look up when she neared me.  

Right around the same time, a homeless woman who I'll call "Lisa" walked up to me and asked me if I would like some assistance.  She started to help me to rip up some of the boxes.  

I was struck by the contrast between how the two women treated me.  The one who society sees as a well-adjusted individual did not interact with me.  The other one, who society views as a maladjusted person who fails to meet economic expectations, was the one who offered to aid me in my work.  

Lisa, who is homeless, gave of herself.  She volunteered to serve.  
Someone might say that I knew Lisa, and that is why she inquired if I would like some help.  Someone might further point out that strangers are unlikely to walk up to people they don't know and ask if they need any help.  

However, Lisa is not the only impoverished person to ask if I needed assistance when I am working on a task outside the house here.  Other poor people of various levels of acquaintance with me have volunteered to help me when I am occupied with work outside.  

People help when they are humble.  When people are poor, they have been humbled, and so they help.

Humility drastically increases the likelihood that someone will volunteer their time.  A humble person, having lost, sees the necessity to give, and thus is ready to give of themselves.  

We receive from humble people.  When we are surrounded by poor persons, we receive.  

In giving of themselves, humble people implicitly welcome others.  Since homeless persons here in Redwood City often are considerate and give of themselves, I feel such a sense of community with them.  I feel supported by them in my efforts to follow the teaching of Jesus that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves.*  

Being implicitly encouraged to love my neighbor, I am being welcomed into joy.  Love leads to joy.  

I feel joy here in Redwood City because the homeless people here teach me how to give of myself and encourage me to love my neighbor.  When we give and love, we feel joy.  

* Matthew 22:39; Mark 12:31; Luke 10:27; Leviticus 19:18; Romans 13:9; Galatians 5:14 

Reaching New Heights

Here at the Redwood City Catholic Worker House, usually on Monday mornings, we host a gathering of Catholic Workers from the San Francisco Bay Area.  Before we celebrate Mass here in the house together, we sit at the kitchen table enjoying the fellowship and community, and update each other on our lives.  We relate rewarding experiences from the last week.  We tell each other about challenges we've been facing.  We explain how our guests and our former guests have been doing, as we've extended hospitality to them.  We share with each other our foibles and mishaps.  

While we were meeting on Monday of this week, I was informing my peers of exciting events coming up in my life.  I also described an errand that my fellow Catholic Worker, Susan, and I recently ran.  I explained that as she and I were returning in our van from picking up some food which had been donated to us, I told her a joke.  

Right after I told her the joke, I thought of the four year old girl in the family who most recently moved out of this Catholic Worker House.  Right after one of us would tell a joke, then this little girl would attempt to tell jokes, which usually devolved and descended into incomprehensible babbling.  

After I told my joke in the van to Susan, I admitted to her, "You know, that sounds like a joke that she would tell."  

Days later, as we sat at the kitchen table for our weekly gathering, I said to everyone at the table that once I realized that I had told a joke resembling one that a four year old would tell, I thought, "I've started telling jokes like ones that four year olds tell.  I'm sinking to new lows."  Then, I described to them how I imagined some of them thinking about my immature sense of humor and dryly replying, "No, Doug.  You're reaching new heights."  

Ray Of Hope

This morning, as the sun was rising, I was helping my fellow Catholic Worker, Susan, clean up our front porch.  We walked out onto the porch this morning and saw that, as usual, there were some items there that no one took from the previous night.  

Here at the Redwood City Catholic Worker House, our front porch is a free zone.  Anyone can come and take anything that's sitting on the porch.  Persons here in Redwood City have come to be familiar with this practice.  People have become so accustomed to coming to the porch that some of them identify this ministry of giving free goods, which happens on the porch, as being synonymous with this particular Catholic Worker House.  Many times I've heard homeless folks refer to this Catholic Worker House simply as "The Porch."   

Since so many people know that they can drop off donations on our porch, people regularly show up to give clothes, toys, and household items and leave them on the porch.  In the morning, Catholic Workers clean up the porch, and remove items no one took away the previous day.  

After Susan and I had finished straightening up the porch this morning, I was walking to the van I use so I could put an empty box in it for usage sometime in the future.  As I was walking down the sidewalk, a young woman came out of the apartment complex next door to us.  

Before I moved in here at the Catholic Worker House, in that building next door lived low-income individuals.  Then the building was renovated, rents in it were raised, and middle-income persons moved into it.  As Larry, a Catholic Worker who co-founded this house dozens of years ago, has noted, due to rising rents and changing demographics, we have been witnessing changes in who we serve and where they live.  We have seen impoverished people forced to move due to lack of funds.   What part does compassion play in determining whether rents go up?  

As rent prices rise, our neighbors change.  Neighbors move, yet we gain new neighbors.  Interpersonal dynamics shift in the neighborhood.  While we used to have closer interactions with certain neighbors and feel more of a sense of community with some people who have moved on, now we cross paths with neighbors we hadn't met.  Yet they are our neighbors and provide opportunities for exchanges between us.  

And so I was conscious of this young woman this morning when she exited the apartment complex next door and greeted me.  Often I notice that wherever I am, many people do not wish others a good morning.  Frequently I notice that numerous people do not even acknowledge the presence of someone else when crossing paths.  

We have opportunities in each and every interaction to display the qualities we wish were present in our society.  What do we want to see in the world?  As Gandhi has noted, we must be the change we want to see in the world.  Do we wish to witness love being shown in the world, hospitality, warmth, and a welcoming friendliness?  Do you like to see the warmth of such light which emerges when others let that light shine through them?  

We should not underestimate the power of such little acts of love.  Saint Therese of Lisieux wrote of how she followed a little way of getting to Heaven by performing little gestures of kindness for others.  

We define ourselves by how we choose to act not only in grand matters but also in tiny ones.  In how we respond in every instant, we articulate the approach we take to life.  We call attention to the worth of every human choice by realizing the value of every action.  And in every little gesture we make, we send little signals of hope, rays of hope which emanate outward from our souls, to the souls of those with whom we come into contact.  Arising out of a consciousness of the value of every choice we make, we can proclaim with Saint Teresa of Calcutta that it is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.  

It may seem insignificant, but at many moments in our day we have the opportunity to welcome the stranger.  Do we do so?  We benefit when we examine our own practices.  Are we friendly to others?  Do we acknowledge others?  To recognize the presence of someone else is to recognize the dignity of that person.  

Are you concerned by how other people treat immigrants?  Do you greet others who you hear speaking in broken English?  Do you smile at them?  Do you try to help them to feel welcome?  

At other times, at first it may be less obvious when we are strongly affirming the dignity and self-esteem of someone by such warm and kind greetings.  The woman walking down the street, whose presence you acknowledge, and thus encourage to realize her own self-worth, may have been slapped in the face earlier in the day by her husband who habitually abuses her.  I am not speaking of a hypothetical scenario here.  Here in Redwood City I have met a homeless woman who, I have been told by multiple people, is regularly beaten by her boyfriend.  When others greet her respectfully, they are tending to her with a healing salve of gentle kindness applied lovingly to the emotional wounds which have been inflicted on her.  

We do well to consider the wounds borne in our midst.  When Catholics pray the rosary, Catholics meditate at times on Jesus being scourged, or whipped, at the pillar soon before He was crucified.*  Jesus was beaten not only at the pillar.  Jesus has told us that whatever we do to the least of those among us, we do to Him.**  Jesus, present in our neighbor who has been abused, is in the person walking toward us on the street.  When we acknowledge our neighbor, we value the presence of Jesus among us.  When we tend to the wounds of our neighbor, we follow Jesus.  

Jesus explained that we are to attend to others who are suffering along our path.  In the Gospel of Luke, we hear that 

There was a scholar of the law who stood up to test Jesus and said, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”  

Jesus said to him, “What is written in the law? How do you read it?”  

He said in reply, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”  

He replied to him, “You have answered correctly; do this and you will live.”  

But because he wished to justify himself, he said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”  

Jesus replied, “A man fell victim to robbers as he went down from Jerusalem to Jericho. They stripped and beat him and went off leaving him half-dead.  A priest happened to be going down that road, but when he saw him, he passed by on the opposite side.  Likewise a Levite came to the place, and when he saw him, he passed by on the opposite side.  But a Samaritan traveler who came upon him was moved with compassion at the sight.  He approached the victim, poured oil and wine over his wounds and bandaged them. Then he lifted him up on his own animal, took him to an inn and cared for him.  The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper with the instruction, ‘Take care of him. If you spend more than what I have given you, I shall repay you on my way back.’  Which of these three, in your opinion, was neighbor to the robbers’ victim?”  

He answered, “The one who treated him with mercy.” 

Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”*** 

In hearing the parable of the Good Samaritan, we think of this parable as conveying a duty to care for our neighbor, not necessarily involving someone literally who has been beaten and is lying by the side of the road.  However, in our lives we come into contact with people who have been abused.  We might pass them without acknowledging their presence, without affirming their dignity and worth, and thus unintentionally contribute to the mistreatment they have been suffering.  Or we can greet them respectfully, giving them support which is much more valuable to them than we realize.  

Do we want to turn a blind eye to the suffering of others, especially when such small offers of warmth and kindness are easily within our power to share with others?  Do you think that you love your neighbors by acknowledging their presence and thus showing them respect?  If so, then go, and do likewise.    

* John 19:1 
** Matthew 25:40 
*** Luke 10:25-37 

Discerning My Vocation

Sometime before the end of the summer, I'll be moving on from the Catholic Worker House here in Redwood City.  Both the other Catholic Workers here and I have agreed that it's not a good fit here with me.  

Recently I've realized that I have performed best in my life where there has been more rather than less structure.  Here at the house the day unfolds in a fairly unstructured way, even relative to other Catholic Worker Houses where I've lived or visited.  

I've also known for a while that obedience is a strength God has given me.  I don't have a problem with work where I am told what to do; in fact, when I'm instructed to do something, I work well.  At Catholic Worker Houses, workers may function in an egalitarian fashion or may take direction from a worker who exercises more authority.  Here at the Redwood City Catholic Worker House, it's decided in an unregimented way who does which work.  Each person is free to autonomously decide on what tasks he or she is going to work.  

Going forward, as I discern my vocation, I am being reminded that God has blessed me with many traits and strengths with which God has prepared me for my vocation, for the specific ministry to which God has been calling me.  I feel that God has led me to maintain certain spiritual practices and disciplines to help me seek Him and to love and adore and glorify and praise Him and to help me to love and serve my neighbor.  

I feel nourished when I silently sit still in solitude trying to listen to God.  I cherish the spiritual practices I learned from the warm, wonderful monks at the hermitage where I lived for a year and a half.  I still try to live out these monastic practices, continuing to embrace the inner monk dwelling within me.  

Yet I have been enjoying spiritual community, including while attending Mass daily, worshipping God and celebrating His blessings, praising Him, and often I have been sitting in adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.  I feel joy these days, including when I aim to serve my neighbor, especially those amongst us who are the most impoverished, including people who are homeless.  I am grateful to God that I can offer to hospitality to others here, especially to those who are sorely in need.  I revel in living simply.  It seems to me that I am being myself, I am being who I am, who God created me to be when I strive to live in this way.  

So how am I to live out these spiritual disciplines?  What is my vocation?  Recently I started meeting with a new spiritual director.  While speaking with him, we discussed how I am to aspire to have a blank slate in my spirit.  In talking with Jesus about who I am, and how I am to live and to be, I am to do my best to remain totally open to what Jesus is trying to help me see about myself.  I strive to have the humility to be a simple servant, ready to carry out the will of God in my life.  I want to open my heart to God, so that God can work through me.  I want God to do His work through me.  

And so I wait to see where God is inviting me.  God is leading us into all Truth, including The Truth of who He is and the truth of who we are.  If we have faith, and thus are open to God leading us, Jesus, as The Way, will lead us into Himself, into The Truth, and we will have Him, The Life.*  If He abides in us and we in Him,** we will have life, and abundantly have it.***  If we will but listen to God, and follow Him, we will have true joy, borne of the truth of who we are in relation to God.  No one can take this joy away from us.****    

I seek the truth of who I am and who God is.  This is the way to true life.  This is true joy.  

* John 14:6 
** John 15:4 
*** John 10:10 
**** John 16:22 

Already Missing Them

Soon I'll be going on vacation.  Today when I was crossing paths with some of the homeless folks I know, I was letting them know that I'll be gone for a couple of weeks.  One of them, who I'll call "Roslyn" here, replied that she and others will be looking forward to seeing me again when I get back from vacation.  I responded that I'll be looking forward to seeing them again too.  
After I had walked away, I realized that I was already missing them.  And then I considered that given that I feel this way, perhaps it's a good indication that bonds of love and community have already formed with these tender people I already miss.