Healthing people

Bishop Edward B. Scharfenberger

Homelessness is an ugly, heart-wrenching scourge that visibly scars urban environments. Yet its insidious roots and tendrils are not always manifest in broad daylight. I recall, during my years in Rome (1969-73), making rounds with fellow seminarians on Saturday nights with a carload of Missionaries of Charity Sisters, Mother Teresa’s community. Surprisingly to me and my companions, they would uncover scores of men, women and children, barely distinguishable from the fallen leaves, the grey church steps or the wooden benches on which they reclined. No doubt they were always there (cf. Mt. 26:11). We just never noticed.

On those late evenings, the sisters would offer sandwiches and pour out warm milk from thermoses we had helped them prepare, praying rosaries between stops, their own quiet presence as unpublicized as those they were serving. Grace led them into the humblest hollows of the poorest environs, where they often lived in cellars, large enough only to accommodate a chapel for Mass and adoration, being active contemplatives. They lived humbly, literally, close to the ground, with little furniture and few creature comforts. 

The pattern of themselves being poor with the poorest follows the sayings of Jesus who inspires disciples to be “salt of the earth,” to bring zest to the blandness of common living, and “leaven” to make a mass of dough rise. Both are metaphors for the power of Gospel joy to dignify, even divinize the humblest and most squalid of human habitats, even those hardly worthy of the name. To those who live in the shadows, the margins of society, the missionaries were bringing their presence, a Presence of the Light!

Or were they merely igniting a candle, always meant to burn, but just needing a spark to ignite it? I think those midnight runs were the first time it dawned on me that “the poor” and the “homeless” have within them an inner radiance, a glimmer of hope, that due to godknowswhat happened (or did not happen) to them in their yet undiscovered, untold past, was smothered over, distorted, almost extinguished by abuse, neglect or outright abandonment. The smiles the sisters drew from their hearts spelt God on their faces.

Father Nelson Baker (1841-1936) was another luminous apostle of charity whom I came to know by legend in the Buffalo area where I had been assigned a few years ago as diocesan administrator. He also encountered such stray and forgotten souls, and closer to home than he had ever imagined. The story of the remarkable — at first reluctant — expansion of his shepherd-heart emerged as he, too, gifted with a stable, business-accomplished family heritage, found himself led into the dregs of society. There he discovered the underbelly of spiritual, emotional and material poverty that the lion of progress, launched by the Industrial Revolution, also bore in its tracks. Oh, and not to be overlooked, his Irish Catholic mother’s prayers that he would one day become a priest, imploring the Blessed Mother to lead her son on a vocational path she correctly discerned years before he did!

I do not know if Father Baker, now Venerable, had a particular kumbaya moment that led to the fruition of a mission of service to Jesus Christ in the poorest. Was it the quelling of riots in New York City as part of his military service during the Civil War — yes, they had them then! — or the shocking unearthing of the skeletons of babies and children (acts of desperation from young women lost in the despair of an out-of-wedlock pregnancy or birth) that the excavations for an Erie Canal under construction exposed which shook him into an awareness of the depth of human misery? His desire to awaken hope from the hopeless became a raging flame that moved him to found orphanages, homes and schools for those society had cast away. 

Father Baker, a pioneer of integral human development, recognized that uplifting the poor and marginalized was not only about helping them but healthing them, that is, clearing the path for them to grow in “wisdom, age and grace” by opening opportunity to discover their own God-given strengths and to develop skills conducive to personal growth and success. Realizing not all the poor and homeless boys he found in the streets were academically inclined, he created a unique approach to Catholic education which focused on learning trades such as carpentry, mechanics and even baking. 

While in Buffalo, I personally was witness to the fruit of Father Baker’s vision and efforts. The foundation (Association of Our Lady of Victory or OLV Charities), which continues his works, had recently acquired the good faith of a bakery that had recently closed. On the table at a board meeting I attended were smartly wrapped chocolate chip cookies. They had been baked, the chairlady explained, by a young man, previously homeless, who had learned the trade. On producing his first batch to share with the board he had said, “for the first time in my life I guess I may have done something good.” They were the best I ever ate.

Reflecting on how best to grow our parish missions — for Jesus calls us all to be missionaries of hope, starting right where we live — discovering our neighbors, learning their stories, and loving them like Jesus does, can open up the same doors of grace that the Missionaries of Charity and Father Baker entered. It might mean sitting down on a church or a park bench with someone, inviting them for a cup of coffee. It could be inviting a family member, a friend, a co-worker or even a stranger to a twelve-step meeting (AA, CA, OA, SA, etc.). A local agency already offering food and clothing, perhaps sponsored by the parish or by Catholic Charities or an ecumenical group, or a community gardens association, or a local chapter of the Knights of Columbus or the Salvation Army — any and all would be excellent places to meet people. Simply by showing up, lives are touched and changed, mutually, by simple gifts of presence. I have been learning that it is often just a matter of showing up, staying and praying for a while, that brings Jesus into lives and changes them — our own and those of others. And you may be the only Jesus some person may ever know!