Forgive Anyone June 1, 2007

But of others there is no memory, for when they ceased, they ceased. And they are as though they had not lived, they and their children after them. Sirach 1:9

“Have faith in God. Amen, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it shall be done for him. Mark 11:22-24

Piety

Let us pray: God, you are beyond time and history. Your witness is to the plight of your children throughout time. Help us to clear our conscience of the selfish, petty grudges we hold against those who we think have wronged us. Instead, let us see how much we are blessed with abundance in our suburban lives. Strengthen our faith and spur us to actions that will truly serve the poor and change their conditions for the better now and in the days to come.

Study

http://www.usccb.org/nab/060107.shtml

Today’s Scripture presents several challenges: 1) how we view and serve the poor; 2) the depth of our faith in God; and the purity of heart we have when we turn to God with our petitions.

The reading from Sirach includes the Biblical passage which gave title to a famous book by James Agee and Walker Evans: “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.” Agee, a writer for Fortune magazine, and Evans, a soon-to-be famous photographer/photojournalist for the Farm Security Administration, went down to the South from New York to trace the lives of poor tenant farmers. The resulting narrative and photos endure as one of the most powerful early works that united words and images to tell a story.

The original assignment, according to the author’s introduction, was to produce a “photographic and verbal record of the daily living and environment” of an average family of tenant farmers. The book tells the story of the three families, the Gudgers, Woods, and Ricketts (pseudonyms for the Burroughs, Tengles and Fields).

Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal was supposed to help the poorest among us. Yet in this 1941 book as well as the 1989 follow-up visit by Dale Maharidge and Michael Williamson, the condition of these families and their hope for a better future is remote.

How far have we come from Sirach to today?

Many who are involved in social justice have come in contact with people like the three families depicted in the Agee/Evans book. If you have gone on a Just Faith border crossing, worked on the hypothermia shelter, or joined the Catholic Workers, S.O.M.E., McKenna’s Wagon or other programs feeding poor and homeless men and women on the streets of Washington, you have lived the experience of Sirach.

The poor are there in the shadows of the places where famous people work – people whom history will not forget. Within less than one city block of the White House, the United Nations or the Vatican, within the long shadow cast on an autumn afternoon, the famous occupants, workers and visitors conduct the business of the nation, the world, and the Church just beyond the reach of people that history will never know.

Beggars kneel on the streets seeing alms from tourists and workers who pass by. The poor pick up a sandwich, soup or meal from vans that deliver food to their doorstop – which is merely the curbside corner of 16^th and H Streets, NW. They try to sleep on in the noisy night on sidewalks and heating grates scattered through the rainy, cold hard streets of a concrete jungle known as Washington, New York, Rome, Fairfax or your home town.

Two thousand years after Jesus Christ walked on the earth with “those godly men, our ancestors, each in his own time,” how little we have done to change the plight of those around us and their children after them whom we see and those far away whom we know suffer yet whom we do so little. (The U.S. at .22 ranks at the bottom of the developed nations in providing non-military foreign aid when ranked as percent of GDP. Norway is at the top giving .93 percent of GDP to foreign aid.)

Jesus challenges the faith of his disciples just like he challenges the moneychangers in the temple. We can pray for the poor all we want. However, Jesus goes on to teach that everything we ask will be granted if we meet a very critical condition: “Therefore I tell you, all that you ask for in prayer, believe that you will receive it and it shall be yours. When you stand to pray, forgive anyone against whom you have a grievance, so that your heavenly Father may in turn forgive you your transgressions.”

Action

How can you step up your involvement in changing your home town and community services to the poor? How can you clear your heart of the grievances that remain against your sisters and brothers so that the Lord will grant your petitions?