Millennium lesson from a homeless man

Crowds jammed the Egyptian desert, St. Peter's in Vatican City, a Bethlehem courtyard, Moscow's Red Square, London's riverside, Times Square in New York City and hundreds of other locales around the globe to count down the arrival of 2000.

As the new millennium entered, rhetoric rose about the great deeds humankind can accomplish in the coming century, deeds that will bring about a new and lasting commitment to amity. But we all know that such resolutions, firmly made in the overnight chill of New Year's, often fade as winter rolls on.

To keep our promises -- articulated for us by religious and political leaders, but also pledged in our own private thoughts -- we might want to keep one simple man and one simple act in our minds as the year unfurls.

Sergio De Giorgio is a homeless man in Italy who was given a ticket to see Pope John Paul II open the Holy Door at St. Peter's Basilica on Christmas Eve. He got the pass as part of an effort by the Vatican to include all levels of society in this historic moment. Those at the ceremony knew they were attending an event that will not be duplicated for another thousand years. It was all the more remarkable, therefore, when the man gave away his ticket -- to a homeless woman from Poland.

"It's not that I didn't want to go," Mr. De Giorgio said. "I met a Polish bag lady who wasn't feeling well, and I gave her what I could. It was more right that she go. She's from the same country as the Pope."

When we think about what needs to be done in the coming century to improve the world, sometimes its problems -- famine, arms build-ups, repression, racism, threats to human life from abortion to euthanasia -- can seem insurmountable. But if one person simply and sacrificially helps another, the problems begin to shrink.

In other words, we don't have to change the world; we just have to change ourselves.

"I gave her what I could," said the homeless man. Not a bad slogan for the third millennium.

(01-06-00)