This article completes the sector on prayer for 2024.
"The deeds you do may be the only sermon some persons will hear today." (St Francis of Assisi)
Last week, I observed a woman being asked by a person seated outside a café, if she would buy him a pie. The woman happily obliged, and hopefully, the man begging heard his sermon.
If a sermon is any good, then it will encourage and give hope. It is meant to do this, in contrast to the shame and guilt handed out by some preachers! Had the woman ignored his request, how do you think that man would have felt?
Obviously the one who made the request was not someone scheming to deceive. He simply needed food and was upfront in asking for it.
There are a lot of theories about this kind of charity, and these theories often reveal our deep seated prejudices and judgments; something akin to the theories which accuse boat people of being queue jumpers.
Who among us would leave our home and pay cash for a risky journey by sea to another country, with no guarantee of a welcome?
Who among us would sit on a street in our own town and ask someone we’ve never seen, if they would buy us a pie?
So I ask: what does all this have to do with prayer? The only answer I have is that prayer, along with the quiet reading of scripture, helps us believe that we are all equal in God’s sight, and when I spot that inequality, then I am obliged to help.
Making time to be reflective in our day to day life, lets us into the Presence of God, and when this happens the skeleton comes out of the closet! We’ll spot the prejudices and the selfishness in our own behaviour.
Vincentians do a lot of charitable work, similar to that in the story above. It is the nature of the organisation to provide immediate relief. Pope Francis warned that there is a “great river of poverty is traversing our cities”, and that every Christian is called to become “personally involved” in the struggle against it. If we attempt to do this however without developing our relationship with God, we risk losing the reverence we need to serve, and then become powerless to preach a sermon like that of the woman who bought the man a pie.
DISCUSSION:
1) What are your thoughts about the quote from St Francis.
2) What are your thoughts about the kind of charity in the story above?
