Missionaries of Charity host these small children in a storefront "school" in Jamshedpur, Bihar, India. These children have nowhere else to go to school and, without some education, little prospects but the street.

A meeting with Poor Lazarus on the streets of Calcutta

Sunday, September 30 Luke 16
If they will not listen to Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise from the dead.” Luke 16: 31

Here is the story of an unlikely voice, taking the place of that poor Lazarus whom the richman Dives wants to send as a messenger to us, warning us against the security that we place in our possessions.

In 2003 I traveled with a group of lay colleagues to India in the IIIE (Ignatian International Immersion Experience) program to see the Jesuit works there. We visited Calcutta, a perplexing place where the trappings of contemporary life meet teeming crowds of the poor. One afternoon our group took a cab to a craft shop that catered to tourists; some of us wanted to purchase gifts to take home. I finished my shopping first and decided to wait for the others outside on the crowded street hoping to find some rhyme or reason to the riddle of Calcutta. I found something that surprised me. A beggar boy of about ten, no doubt carefully trained and rewarded for his skill, began to pester me for a handout. I resisted and decided to go back into the store knowing that the guard would prevent him from coming in. The plate glass doors, I knew, would become, in Abraham’s phrase, “a great chasm” to prevent that boy from crossing.

But as I sat inside waiting for my companions the boy kept up a vigil within sight of me through these same plate glass doors. He kept staring at me and every once in a while our eyes would meet. No doubt his handlers trained him in this stare knowing that it would finally shame the target into making a donation.

It worked. But in this unexpected way. Sitting there I heard the eyes of that beggar boy telling me that I was no better off than he. In the great scheme of things, his eyes said, we are both beggars lacking the means to a secure destiny. And I heard Jesus’ question from the scripture: “Which of you by worrying can add even a cubit to your stature?” His stare said to me: “you are poor like me; we are all poor; and the poor always share what little they have.” The boy crossed the chasm. He had nothing to lose and it was clear who was the vulnerable one.

I forget faces of people I met last Thursday but I know I can pick this boy out of a lineup now four years later. The boy takes the place of Lazarus, a messenger sent from another world to warn us.

Myself and my companions as well, we all gave him some money as we left that fancy shop and it was all we could do to tumble into a cab before other beggars came to besiege us. I have no illusions about that boy…. His only future was the hardness of the street. But I am praying that I have something positive to tell him when we meet in the world to come.

These triplet boys are members of Saint Malachy Parish.

About a year ago their father, Scott, sent this message to his friends:

"BARBARA AND I ARE GOOD. THE BOYS ARE MONSTERS!"

Earlier shortly after their baptism I got this message:

"I did say [at the baptism] that Sean, Matthew and Luke
have many mothers and fathers [who helped out greatly when the boys were born and not all three could go home from the hospital at the same time].
The three boys have already worn little baby [Saint Joseph's] Hawk socks. The class of 2027
sounds great."

These boys are blessed with Barbara and Scott. Don't the three now look like angels?

Those of us raising or working with kids and young people of all ages can take heart from last Sunday's gospel.

Sunday, September 16. Jesus' Parable of the Prodigal Son and the Loving Father

The power of this parable of love and forgiveness seems never more needed than it is needed today.

And without any doubt in this gospel Jesus speaks of this power as a divine power, a power exercised by the God whom he calls Father, the God whom he invites us to know. This God in the divine wisdom reaches out in love and forgiveness especially to the young, to sons and daughters, to those who have not yet come to an understanding of themselves. Not that God neglects us who are older or us who have stopped doing very much searching. But young people face particular challenges and the evidence of this parable shows us that our God is the kind who longs to help the young meet their challenges.

And why is the story consoling? Indeed the young may find consolation in this story. Especially the ones who have run away from their families and seek a way back. Especially the dutiful children who are not sure of the love of their families. But those of us who are older, we, too, can find consolation.

Those who labor on college campuses can find the image of God depicted here to be particularly consoling. Engaging the young in the pursuit of truth, helping the young realize their potential, fostering in the young the tools to bring about a better world of peace and justice, forgiving the young for their youthful excesses or resentments, and drawing them always closer to the sources of true love and service, all these actions make those older people who conduct them colleagues with this God whose image we read about today, the image here in this loving Father of the prodigal son and the dutiful son.

The tree stands in front of the house that Kay lived in all her life. Across the street is the Church of the Holy Family.

23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Those who do not carry their own crosses and come after me cannot be my disciples. Luke 14.

When we were growing up, lots of grownups encouraged my siblings and me Among our favorites was my godmother, Kay, (my mother’s friend from her childhood). She was a witty woman, unmarried, with a career as an office manager. Kay lived her entire life in the same small house across the street from Holy Family Church in Manayunk. After her retirement and after her parents had died peacefully in their beds, she lived alone. Her life was her church, her house, her siblings and their families, her friends and a stray godchild like me. Her life was an easy one, her house immaculate, (we joked that everything in her basement could pass the white glove test), her routines her own.

But she told me about her doubts. She knew this gospel. She knew that the Lord was asking us to take up our cross and follow him. And she never had any crosses. She asked herself: Will I get to heaven without carrying any cross? So she did a very courageous thing-an initiative that the founder of the Jesuits, Ignatius Loyola, might recommend, but an initiative that I, and perhaps most of us, would shrink from doing. She prayed for a cross.

Not long after she began this prayer, the Lord answered her. Her favorite niece went through a divorce and found herself and her two teenage children without a place to live. Aunt Kay responded generously. The three of them descended on her and transformed her happy home. Her cross was giving up control of her space, giving up her privacy and peace, giving up the calmness of her prayer. She told me later to be careful about what I pray for!

All things worked out eventually for the good. Aunt Kay became the Lord’s disciple. And best of all, of course, Aunt Kay, dead now a number of years, is reaping her reward.

LUKE 13:22-30 21st Sun Ord Time MMS IMMIGRATION POLICY

“And people will come from the east and from the west and from the north and the south and will recline at table in the kingdom of God. Some are last who will be first and some are first who will be last.”

Luke opens this section of his gospel, as he does in other sections, with a question or a request. Sometimes these questions or requests are sincere, related to enthusiasm or curiosity: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” “Lord, teach us to pray.” “What is the kingdom of God like?” “Lord, increase our faith.” But today’s questioner asks, “Lord, will only a few people be saved?” No enthusiasm here or even curiosity. A pessimist poses today’s question.

This is a bean-counter’s question, a question from a person more worried about himself than attracted to Jesus. Jesus begins his answer to the question in the spirit with which it is asked. He does not know if few or many will be saved but he senses that the questioner has reason to worry. He seizes an opportunity. He explains clearly that those who are complacent will lose their seats at the table of the Lord.

The setting becomes once again a place where Jesus repeats what he has said over and over again: some are last who will be first and some are first who will be last.

Some mornings early before the heat of the day, I take a walk through my neighborhood in Merion, just across City Ave from the Philadelphia neighborhoods of Overbrook and Wynnewood. In all but the darkest winter mornings, I observe trucks of landscaping equipment drive across the city boundary making their way from some urban staging area to the green lawns of the suburbs. The men in the trucks invariably are of Latin American origin. Without these workers the estates of the Main Line would look like tropical forests by this time of year.

Some of these men, perhaps, have families in the city. Most of them probably left their families, parents and wives and children, back home in Mexico or Central America. Who knows if they have documents or not?

Many of you have images of outsiders like this in your hearts and minds, images of women and children on the move out of harm’s way, images of whole families who without help cannot sustain themselves in times of food shortages, images of scrappy people in informal economies that make something out of nothing, all of them outside the mainstream of status, power or the economy.

Jesus, of course, speaks of a religious reality here when he speaks of the outsiders sitting at table in the Kingdom of God; he speaks of a God rejecting the complacent who thought they would have a good seat; he speaks of a God offering the seats at the best tables to those whom the world rejects. There are, of course, a thousand ways in which we can act to assist God in his effort to seat this great multitude, a thousand ways that we can prepare for the kingdom by promoting a more just society.

But let me speak for a moment about the outsiders who are keeping our Main Line lawns cut, about our own nation and about what our Church is proposing in the area of immigration reform.

Cardinal Mahoney spoke about these men in May in a great speech he gave at the Constitution Center here in Philadelphia entitled “Immigration, the American Economy and the Constitution.”
I learned from this speech that 90% of the 500,000 unauthorized immigrants who enter the country each year find jobs within six months, but only 5,000 immigrant visas are available each year.

Despite the title of his talk the background of his recommendations regarding immigration reform focused neither on the Constitution nor on the American Economy. He spoke rather of economy in its original sense and of the notion of the alien and the stranger in the scriptures

The root meaning of economy, he said, is the arrangement of the household, in religious terms the just and peaceful arrangement of the household of God. He asked, “Is God’s good household roomy enough for all? And followed that question with this reference to the Constitution: “Who precisely is the we in we the people?”

From Deuteronmy he quoted the sentence: “You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

This notion of economy and the moral guidance of scripture provide, he said, the underpinnings of the position of the Catholic Church on immigration reform legislation. As many of you know, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee on Migration worked diligently in Congress in the spring for the passage of a just immigration bill.

The key points in our Catholic position are these:
(a) family unity for all workers; (b) a fair and realistic path to citizenship for current workers; and (c) a new worker program leading to permanent residency
No bill passed and I do not know when legislation will come before Congress again.

But the nation will call us again to work for a just and open immigration policy. We cannot equate in any way a just and open society to the kingdom that Jesus will usher in when he comes again. But it is a human beginning, a prelude, a recognition that we want to labor with our God who creates and restores human dignity.

From Luke’s gospel we know what Jesus foresees: some will neglect the call to the kingdom though there is “plenty good room.” And others will come from all directions. Not simply the queen of the south or the merchants of Corinth, or the classical learned. Joining them and taking some of the front seats will be those who run the dishwashers in the Central City restaurants and those who pick up after us and those who cut our grass.

“And people will come from the east and from the west and from the north and the south and will recline at table in the kingdom of God. Some are last who will be first and some are first who will be last.” Luke 13: 29-30

“PRAYER” (My warning from Mary Greene!)

Luke 11:1-13 (Sunday, July 29)

The diagnosis once known as Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) is now called AD/HD, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Predominantly Inattentive Type. I give thanks that God has spared me this tongue-twister disorder. It often has very serious consequences for those who suffer with it. But at the same time when I pray I sometimes feel as though I fit into the “predominantly inattentive type.”

How difficult to learn to pray. Even so, what Jesus says is simple and clear: just say this “Our Father, who art in heaven….

You may have heard about the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises. As Saint Ignatius Loyola did in the past, the Jesuits offer these prayerful exercises in a variety of formats: the thirty day retreat; an eight-day format; at the University level we offer a retreat in everyday life to fit the academic calendar of 24 weeks. My favorite retreat is the 12-minute one that we Jesuits are to make twice a day called the Examen of Consciousness. It is a flexible format of five or six prayerful attitudes that enrich the routine of everyday life.

Those like me who are “predominantly inattentive types” can do this prayer moving the fingers on the rosary beads to help focus attention. During the first decade I repeat a prayer of request for the spirit…And I have similar short prayers to say for each of the five decades. I told Mary Greene, one of my pious older friends about this way of saying the rosary, about reciting prayers different from the Hail Mary on the beads. She scolded me: “The Blessed Mother wouldn’t like that.”

FROM THE ARCHIVES:

Nirmal Hriday (hospice of the dying)

Mother Teresa founded her first hospice for the destitute and dying in a neighborhood of Calcutta, Kalighat. Here pictured is the women's ward. Many young volunteers were serving there on this November day in 2003. They sat with those who were close to death and comforted them.

ANOTHER MEMORY OF INDIA (thanks to Elizabeth Eck, one of my companions, who gave me this picture)

November, 2003: We scarcely arrived for our one visit at Kalighat in Calcutta, Mother Teresa's first hospice for the poor and dying, when a cab drove up to the door carrying two sisters, Missionaries of Charity, and a sickly man whom they had picked up from the streets. Two burly young volunteers from South Korea without hesitating hurried to the cab and carried this dirty and redolent man into the hospice. They placed him on a stretcher and took him to the shower area so that they could bathe him. Painted on the wall over the bathing area, was a reminder placed there at the request of Mother Teresa herself: “The Body of Christ.”

These young volunteers, surely, acted as they did because they shared her faith.