The Richness of Life

Sister Joyce opens with, "I was standing in the aisle in the grocery store . . ."

Now, THIS is MY kind of religious or cleric.

Archbishop Hunthausen said when as Bishop he would never be allowed to eat a lousy meal again. And so he moved into an apartment.

All clerics and religious, including Cardinals, should do there own shopping and grocery bills.

Find out what life is really like, and prioritize . . .

Find out what it really means to share a meal in love and in peace, without requiring old folk to kneel at the sound of a little bell, but to embrace, and to share meager resources in the Church of the Poor which awaits us, which calls us, which ever beckons us, in patient loving forgiveness.

"I do not believe that this is a matter of condemning a comfortable life, but, rather, wanting this for all people," write Joyce Rupp.
Seems to me that in USA we are aplenty with things and means of things to have in over abundance. If we could be more present, more caring and more sharing of what we have that is necessary and even unncessary, we could indeed, have others who have nothing or very little, to experience 'a bit of a comfortable life' also. In this way, perhaps, a chain of giving and sharing would bring peace and justice one to another to another to another an to another....

Amen and Amen! We always need to be alert of when those sharp spiritual pains pinches us into a new awareness of life. The Spirit speaks to us everywhere, not just when we are engaged in some especially pious activity. Sister’s words through her blessed gift of writing have been a source of comfort and challenge for so many and these here are no different. The more we stop taking what we have for granted, realizing that so much of it is truly squandered, maybe we could begin to see the truth in what Jesus taught. Like she said, “It is good that we are challenged to use our resources in such a way that others can also have a more humane life. It is essential that we are reminded often that each human being is our sister or our brother. It is the message Jesus taught so long ago. It is an ageless teaching and we are always in need of re-learning and living the message.” May it be so that we do.

Often it is confusing to be a materially sufficient Christian. Often I have to trust that God put me where I am and in this time for a reason. I know that my purchases might make some sort of livelihood possible for someone and are thus, in one way, necessary. I press on paying more for Fair Trade, organic and locally produced products whose planters, growers, producers and assemblers are hopefully able to live a respectful life because of my choices. I'm trying to downsize but must choose which really nice items to keep for the professional wardrobe i will soon need again. Should I donate or keep that classic sweater I love that a recipient might appreciate or might snub because it is hopelessly outdated and would make her feel bad to wear? Can I keep those quality items I know that I will probably wear until I die? Thrift shops report that they divvy the clothes into those that will sell in American stores, those with a foreign market an those that are destined to be rags. Do I organize and keep endless photo albums because they bring myself and people joy or do dispose of them because they are unessential and drag my mind from more important needs? If I walk away from them, I leave another with the problem. Truly it is harder for a rich person to enter the Kingdom than a camel to pass the eye of the needle in Jerusalem.

I agree that the challenge is not for us to have nothing or just a little like so many but to help them have the richness of choices and opportunities too. I don't envy someone in a mansion as I live in my mobile home. I have the comfort of knowing I can afford to live here forever even though it's not exactly where I want to be. Freedom from having to worry about necessities is wonderful and that should be something all people should be entitled to reach for. Unlike Sister, I can't buy anything I want to in that grocery store but I can buy more than enough and I am thankful every day that I can.

The perceptive comment by Frere Charles resonated with me! I don't pay much attention anymore to what the Bishops (even the Pope) says. I will again when: women are ordained, I see these men in picket lines, at food pantries and meal programs, at peace vigils (not just prolife vigils), etc. Some years ago, I knew a priest who lived with a family and was required to make meals and even change the baby's diapers! More of our clergy should experience these life experiences -- they always seem to busy. Today, The Gospel was about the Beatitudes, and what was the homily? Our ARchbishop in a taped message asking for money for the forthcoming stewardship campaign! What a rich opportunity wasted. If we didn't have such timid and tepid homilies, and the everyday life of people were respected with rcognition and praise, we might have more people in church! And it would be more of a community.

I just want to make a retrait during Lent this year to proclaim by my life GOD/FATHE< SON< SPIRIT IS MY LIFE !!!
Suzanne

What I needed to hear today. Thank you!

It is an accident that I read this column. It is an accident of birth that I am a citizen of the United States of America and that I was raised a Roman Catholic. It was a choice I made to become a priest and it was a choice I made to leave a very comfortable life in exchange for a life of work, marriage and raising a child. I choose to live in a country that has chosen to invest its wealth in weapons that destroy men and women and children and sometimes knowing this makes me want to bang my head against the wall.
I work with survivors of physical, sexual and emotional abuse. It's work and it's a challenge to help people move beyond the self-defeating survival behaviors that help them make it through the day. It breaks my heart when I think of millions of trauma survivors we are creating in the name of projecting our power across the globe. Who will help those individuals and families heal? What good we could have done in this world with all of the wealth that has been wasted on eliminating threats to our peace of mind.

I lived and served 30 years in nine Latin American countries, beginning in the Kennedy Administration's Alliance for Progress. As I look back, all that foreign aid didn't have a chance against the corruption of the Latin leaders. What is a fair return on their capital? 20%. And how did they ensure it? By manipulating/bribing/threatening local puppet legislatures to grant companies monopolies. Poverty and lack of medical care and faulty education in many many countries is a function of local elites and not the callousness of the wealthy west. Here is an anecdote. When I lived in Costa Rica children had to wear a prescribed uniform to school, all schools - shoes, shirt skirt/pants. But there was only one repeat ONE company in the country where you could purchase it. Somehow someone had granted a friend the legal monopoly on school uniforms. In Chile way back when, the government subsidized all medical school education with the proviso that graduates must spend a term serving in medically underserved areas. The ease with which graduates got out of that provision - useful connections, bribes etc. was appalling. So based on my experience, the poverty of Africa et al is a function of their corrupt elites. I no longer believe it is the fault of the wealthy west.

Jesus did not canonize poverty, nor did He condemn wealth. This is an important thing for us to recall when we talk about effective ministry to the poor.

People often make the mistake of believing that the economic pie is finite, there is only so much of it. The reverse is true, the pie can get bigger with economic growth, greater efficiency, etc. The goal of effective compassion is to enable as many people as possible to partake in the pie, thereby growing it even as it is shared.

I applaud the person who buys Fair Trade items. In so doing, they are supporting farming around the world, even and most especially in small nations. I support the repeal of tariffs and subsidies for businesses that effectively close American markets to second and third world nations' products. I support the curbing of the unions who support tariffs on imported goods in an effort to increase the wages of American workers at the cost of the poor throughout the world (while also driving companies to export jobs in an effort to curtail the excessive wages of union members). I support the widest and most open market possible -- a market that allows for effective competition, unfettered by artificial governmental price controls.

Consumption is not in and of itself an evil. Consumption drives the economy of the US and less consumption leads to increases in unemployment, as we have all seen over the last 18 months or so. The answer is consumption of goods that are produced by a free and open market -- a market that is fair and open to all, a market that treats every person the same, whether they come from the industrialized west, or the developing world.

The free and open market, a market based on the ideal of Christian fairness -- that all people have a right to participate in the market, free from overwhelming greed of governments, unions, and top executives, and free from governmental, union, and other artificial manipulations and interferences, will raise the standard of living for all the world.