Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time 'B'

Sunday November 12, 2006

Pumping up the proud or lifting up the lowly?

The City of Paterson was one among many cities that suffered the devastating effects of the riots that plagued urban centers throughout the country in the late sixties. I can still smell the tear gas fumes and hear the constant scream of police and fire apparatus as they attempted to put out fires and quell the anger of people whose frustration reached the boiling point. Though the troublemakers were ‘outsiders,’ theirs was the rage of the silent citizens locked in those ghettoes and ghettoes throughout the nation that some civil activists considered subtle pogroms. I lived beyond the imaginary red line that separated the urban center of Paterson from the still comfortable eastside section of the city.

All the churches and religious centers, inner and outer city, Catholic and those of other traditions, banned together and became bonded brothers and sisters in their effort to bolster the hope of the poor. But they did more. They initiated a massive effort to bring the attention of the larger community to the reality of urban decay and poverty. Slumlords and rent gougers were targeted. But community leaders were also identified and forced to take greater responsibility for the city and city dwellers. Clergy and lay people joined hands with the poor to find solutions to the downward thrust of life in the city.

We knew the problems but we didn’t have all the answers. We knew that we had to dwell with the poor. How else could we understand what poverty feels like? So Fr. Lou Simonett moved out of his comfortable rectory in the Riverside section into an old dilapidated roach-infested third floor apartment on Graham Avenue in the very heart of the Ghetto. Lou gave everything he had and more but after several years, burned out.

In a burst of generosity or guilt or lunacy—probably all three—Fr. Joe my colleagues and classmate of many years and I moved into the apartment just to maintain a diocesan presence.

The building shook in the wind. A kerosene stove provided heat. We shared the kitchen with a few stray mice that allowed us to use the kitchen for breakfast and supper only. Our bed supports rested on small cups filled with roach powder to keep unwanted crawlers from nightly invasion.

It was an adventure, to be sure. Only now, almost forty years later, do I realize how dangerous that adventure was — not because of violence in the street but because of the threat of fire inside the apartment or a collapse of the entire building in a storm. We could feel the entire building shake in the wind.

At any rate, it was an experience I will long remember and treasure despite the fact that in hindsight, it was tokenism at best. I learned a great lesson one evening during one of many “living room” dialogues with neighbors. A middle aged Afro-American thanked us for our willingness to “taste” poverty in the city. However, he also reminded us that poverty is more than the absence of money and a safe home. It is the loneliness of non-recognition and the power of prejudice that ruled the city resulting in sense of powerlessness and immobility. He said, “Father Lasch, you are free to move about this city and you can return to your comfortable home on the East Side. And do you know what else? Your skin is white from the inside out and you can’t change that.” We hugged each other and I realized at that moment that although I could taste poverty and prejudice from the outside in, I would never know poverty from the inside out.

I witnessed a generosity among the poor that I have never seen elsewhere. Although they had little for themselves, they always had enough for a neighbor and sometimes a neighborhood! They gave whatever they had without counting the cost.

In his gospel account this weekend, Mark describes how Jesus entered the temple, observed the widow putting her two cents into the treasury. Then he sat down as if to judge what was happening before his eyes. Jesus pointed to the widow with lament and looked with distain at the Scribes. The widow was powerless. The scribes were powerful. The widow gave everything she had. The scribes took everything they could get. In fact, Jesus was not praising the generosity of the window as much as he was chastising the arrogance of temple leaders who exploited what little she had in order to pump up their position and life-style. It was their responsibility to take care of widows but they took advantage of the widow’s mite and their might.

Jesus took the opportunity to remind his disciples that if they were to become his faithful followers, they needed to know the powerlessness that comes from total dependence on God but more importantly, Jesus was reminding the Scribes and his listeners about their responsibility to take care of those who are unable to care for themselves.

How appropriate is it that this gospel comes on this Sunday after election day to remind us and ‘those in charge’ of the ‘temple’ (church) and the nation that the care of the poor must be a common cause for all.

Mark places this episode just before Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem where he gave up his life, entrusting himself to the Father. “He was faithful unto death….” “Into your hands, I commend my spirit.”

It is also a healthy reminder that we are not in complete control of our destiny. We need to know that our status and stature are not based on what we possess but on who we are before God and what we give away through our heavenly trust.

Father Bill Bausch in his book, “A World of Stories” quotes Rudyard Kipling’s address to the graduating class of McGill University in Montreal: “Do not pay too much attention to fame, power, and money. Some day you will meet a person who cares for none of these, and then you will know how poor you are.”

“For where your treasure is, there is your heart.” [Matthew 6:21]

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