“Why did you stop?” the homeless gentleman struggling to get into our truck from his wheelchair asked us. That is the question. Why would two people driving by stop and help a complete stranger? It is a question that reverberates throughout the world. A world where sin and selfishness rule the day. It was a completely valid question for him to asks us. After all, my husband and I watched this gentleman struggling in his wheelchair against the cold early spring wind that evening as countless people drove right by him. I answered matter of factly and joyfully: “We follow Jesus. We are Catholics.”
The answer is that simple. We follow and love Christ, so we help those in need whenever we are able to. We didn’t know he was homeless when we drove by him and I saw him struggling across the Kroger parking lot trying to make his way across the street. I saw agony on his face and asked my husband if he looked okay. Without saying anything, my husband turned around, hopped out of our truck, and asked him if he needed help. In the process of turning around, I saw car after car drive right around him as if he was nothing more than a roadblock. No one stopped to see if he needed help.
It wasn’t apparent from the look of him that he was homeless. He could have simply been struggling in the wind to get to the bus stop and needed a friendly push. It didn’t matter. He was suffering and the world was indifferent to him. How many Christians drove right past him without so much as an acknowledgement of their afflicted fellow man? We have our own tasks, agendas, and important things to do. We cannot be bothered to stop. To see Christ in our midst in the poor.
I thought about all of this as my husband pushed him across the street and got him out of traffic, so they could talk about what was going on. We’ve helped those in need before, including addicts, which are complicated cases. In these situations we don’t offer money. We tend to provide food or pay for hotel rooms. My husband wanted to assess the situation before bringing me in. After about 15 minutes, he deemed the gentleman as down on his luck and harmless enough to put in our truck.
I moved the truck to where they were talking and hopped out. I introduced myself and chatted with him as my husband tried to find the best hotel nearby to put him up in for a couple of nights in order to get out of the late March chill. My husband asked him the hard questions about drugs and alcohol. We have a very good contact in the area for those cases we like to give to people in that situation. He said he didn’t have an issue with those things, and while we can never be sure, he did not have the traits of someone who was high or drunk.
He was humble, grateful, and friendly. He seemed genuinely surprised that we had stopped to help him, hence his question after battling the pain from a chronic leg injury to get into the truck. His name was the Muslim version of Joseph, we have a strong devotion to St. Joseph in our family, so the name was not lost on us. He told us his mother had been Christian and his father was Muslim. He knew St. Joseph from both the Bible and the Koran when my husband talked to him about this beloved saint.
We drove him to a local hotel to get him a room for a couple of nights. He assured us his government benefits would kick in on the first of the month again and he would be fine at that point. My husband gave him his cell number so he could let us know when is settled in an apartment. I pulled out the Divine Mercy image to give to him before we left. Once more stating that the reason we were there is because of Jesus Christ. All glory to Him!
While we are always cautious, we also understand that poverty is complicated. We don’t know why every person is living on the street. Both of us have encountered addicts, alcoholics, the mentally ill, as well as a wide variety of other issues. Christ doesn’t tell us not to give shelter to the drunk, the addict, or the mentally ill. In fact, He doesn’t give us a list of qualifications before we can help the poor. What they need from us is to be the face of Christ. They need us to see them, rather than drive by.
When we got home that evening, I sat in our bedroom reading Servant of God Catherine Doherty’s Nazareth Family Spirituality: Celebrating Your Faith at Home with Catherine Doherty. I came to the following providentially timed passage:
When I was growing up in Russia, my father was a diplomat. One time he and my mother gave a big, fancy tea party at our home for several hundred ambassadors and dignitaries. We were in the middle of having formal tea, with everyone using nice china and so forth. I was about nine years old at the time, and I was allowed to be there, all dressed up and carrying little cakes and being polite. Suddenly, the butler opened the door and announced to my father, “Christ is at the door.” Well, the French ambassador’s wife dropped her expensive tea cup on the rug. She was not used to such interruptions!
Father excused himself, mother excused herself, and off they went. And whom did they welcome? A hobo who had come to the door begging. And what did they do? My mother and father served him themselves, even though we had fourteen servants in the house. My mother laid out the best linens, the most expensive silver and our best china and so forth, and she served a hobo. My father did likewise. I saw all of this and I wanted to serve the hobo too, and Mother said: “Oh no. You were not obedient last week; you cannot serve Christ unless you are obedient.” So, in my mind, to serve the poor was a great honor and a great joy.
Would we set out our best china for a homeless man or woman in our midst? Do we understand what “a great honor and a great joy” it is to serve the poor? Based on the fact that numerous people drove right past this gentleman named after Our Lord’s foster father, the answer seems to be no. We have more important things to do and the homeless make us uncomfortable because they are different from us. They are not always safe and they are not always mentally put together.
The Christian life is not about comfort. In our culture, this is difficult for us to grasp. “The world offers you comfort, but you were not made for comfort. You were made for greatness!” said Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. Embracing greatness is to set aside our comfort and security in order to reach out to the suffering among us. To see Christ in the poor and the needy. To see Christ in the addict and the alcoholic or the mentally ill. To see Christ in the down on their luck people who come from complicated and dysfunctional family situations. It is to set aside judgment in favor of compassion and charity.
Christ has commanded us to love our neighbor as our selves; to love others as He loves them. We all fail on a daily basis in this regard and we struggle with our own addictions to comfort, but it is because of our Crucified Savior that we should not leave a man suffering in the cold wind to sleep outside in his wheelchair. There is always a risk of enabling when we help the homeless, but if Christ’s mercy wins out over judgment in the face of our great sins, then we can take the risk of being merciful by offering a couple nights of shelter to a homeless man.
This is not only for the homeless among us. Suffering is all around us. We live in an age when people are desperate to be seen. Our technological age has created immense spiritual blindness and loneliness. We no longer see one another in a meaningful way. We dehumanize one another while claiming to be connected. We go about our day without seeing those around us in need. It may be the cashier at the store, a neighbor, co-worker, our own children or spouse, or it may be a struggling homeless man or woman on the street. Do we truly see the people around us or do we pass them by? Do we stop to help them? Do we reveal Christ’s love to them? Why did you stop? This question could very easily be: Why did you see me, nobody else does?
The world around us is not being transformed because we do not radically live the Gospel. We’ve chosen a safe, lifeless, suburban Catholicism that isn’t life-giving. The saints give everything. They help the poor and the afflicted without analyzing the worthiness of the recipient. None of us are worthy of our redemption, but Christ freely gives it. If we want to change the world, then we must seek Christ in others from the poor man in the wheelchair to the technology addicted teen to the sinful priest standing at the altar.
The litmus test for our Christian discipleship is based on the company we keep. Do we seek the sick, homeless, and afflicted? Are we helping those harassed by the diabolical forces wreaking havoc in our culture? Are we more concerned with status, honor, money, and comfort or are we willing to go into difficult situations in order to be the light of Christ to a person in need? Do we set the fine china for the hobo?
The world does not need our opining in social media about the ills of the world. The world needs us to shut off our phones and computers, so we can seek out those in our community, physically present to us, who are most in need. We must minimize the distractions in order to truly see Christ in our midst. We are less likely to see others when we are distracted by a million other things we have no control over. How many times did you or I drive or walk right past Jesus in our midst this week alone?
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image: Statue of Jesus disguised as homeless beggar in front of St. Francis of Assisi Church. Sculpted by Timothy P. Schmalz./ Leonard Zhukovsky / Shutterstock
