What do we owe to the poor?

That question underlies much of our current political and social discourse. We ask it — perhaps subconsciously — when we encounter someone on a street corner asking for money, when we drive through struggling neighborhoods, or when we read about the human impact of government shutdowns or freezes on benefit payments. How we answer the question of what we owe our poor reveals something profound about our understanding of charity and justice.

Recently I re-read “Dear and Glorious Physician,” Taylor Caldwell’s masterful historical fiction about St. Luke. One of the biblical occurrences cited is “from the sixth hour there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour” (Mt 27:45; cf. Mk 15:33; Lk 23:44).  Caldwell depicts the celestial events experienced by the Passover throng gathered in Jerusalem as being witnessed by Luke hundreds of miles away.

On Dec. 8, the Church celebrates the 60th anniversary of the closing of the Second Vatican Council. Vatican II was the first “pastoral” ecumenical council in the history of the Church.  Called by St. John XXIII in 1959, the Council was not convened to settle doctrinal questions or disputes as in the past, but to bring about a great missionary renewal of the Church to bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the modern world. However, the legacy of Vatican II over the past 60 years has not been without controversy. There has been much confusion and misunderstanding surrounding Vatican II because there has been a widespread misinterpretation of the Council since it’s closing sixty years ago.  

When Jesus, therefore, saw his mother and the disciple standing by, whom he loved, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, thy son.”  Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, thy mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his home (Jn 19:26, 27). 

With those words, the dying Christ commended his mother to the loving care of St. John the Apostle. Where Mary lived with the beloved disciple afterward is an open question.

Dominating the skyline of 1200-year-old Hamburg, Germany, stands the towering ruins of St. Nikolai Church.  At the time of its reconstruction in 1874, it was the world’s tallest building. Today it is a blackened skeleton of its former glory and a haunting reminder of one of the most devastating bombing campaigns of World War II. In July 1943, the Allied Combined Bomber Offensive launched Operation Gomorrah, a multi-day campaign that culminated in some of the war’s most devastating firebombing.

Who or what is Jesus? 

According to author Martin Mosebach, “The early Christians knew that the Christian message was Jesus himself. The essence of the Gospels’ new, more profound, and more compelling picture of God was that God had become flesh, present among us.” (“The Heresy of Formlessness: The Roman Liturgy and Its Enemy” (Ignatius Press). There was much confusion about Jesus’ precise relationship to God.

To this day, I can recall watching “Predators of the Mara,” a rerun of “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom,” on a quiet Sunday afternoon in the early 1980s. In that episode, a cheetah chases down and kills a young wildebeest. It is a remarkably brutal scene of struggle for the wildebeest to get free from the cat’s jaws locked on its neck. The horror I felt as I watched one animal kill another was tempered only by the calming voice of Marlin Perkins, who explained that the herd was ultimately stronger because predators in the Maasai Mara National Reserve helped to cull the sick and the weak. This was natural selection — survival of the fittest.

When life begins to fall apart, people often begin looking for God. Illness, injury, and the proximity of death tend to strip away our illusions of control. For many who are hospitalized — especially those facing the end of life — the heart opens in ways it may not have in decades. This vulnerability becomes holy ground, a final opportunity for grace to break through.
 

The garden can be a metaphor for our relationship with God. He is the “master gardener” who helps us through our struggles and lovingly celebrates our triumphs. The same can be said of our ups and downs in the garden; Colorado has experienced years of water deficiency, but recent rains have been a true blessing. All one has to do is look to the mountains or across the prairie to see the rich color of green!