One night a man came to our house to tell me that a Hindu family of eight children had eaten nothing for days. They had nothing to eat.
I took enough rice for a meal and went next door. I could see their hungry faces. The mother took the rice from my hands, divided it in half and went out. When she came back I asked her, "Where did you go?"
She answered, "They also are hungry." "They" were a Muslim family living next door. From St Teresa of Calcutta
Living as stewards of wealth is not easy in this world where 1.3 billion live on less than a dollar a day. How many of these have nothing? Do we consider ourselves rich?
Am I rich? Compared to the members of the human family this question gives us pause. How do we handle the responsibility of being rich?
I remember going out for dinner in Calgary. On our journey to the restaurant we passed streets where it was best to drive through, not stop, and perhaps not look too closely. The homeless are a permanent fixture, as are the hungry. Well, I thought twice about enjoying a sumptuous meal that night.
Recently we toured a market area in Ottawa and enjoyed a tourist delicacy the "beaver tail". Again, it was not without brushing sleeves with those who asked for handouts, and it was not without passing the man covered with newspaper and huddled in the doorway of a closed shop.
Even the church is not free from the challenges faced by those who would follow Christ. Within days of his election, Pope Francis announced that he would not be living in the magnificent papal apartments but in a small suite in the Domus Sanctae Marthae, the Vatican guesthouse. Later he accepted the resignation of Germany Bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst who spent$43 million renovating his residence.
There are other signs of changing attitudes among prelates of the Church. Archbishop Charles Chaput, put the $10 million residence he inherited up for sale and moved to a small apartmentat the St. Charles Borromeo Seminary soon after assuming the leadership of the Philadelphia Archdiocese. He later sold the 16-room mansion to St. Joseph University.
It is easy to appreciate the quandary faced by church dioceses who are trying to fund-raise to keep schools and hospitals open and support programs for the hungry while at the same time possessing multi-million dollar mansions their prelates have inherited or built.You and I are fortunate not to face such extreme disconnects between what we have and what we must share as Christians. At the end of our time on earth we will face a simple fact of judgement - we will only be able to keep what we have given away.
Until then we need to live in gratitude for all that we have. We need to spend time, as good stewards, sharing our talents and our treasure with our brothers and sisters on this earth.
(Thanks to thoughts collected from essays by Mark Gordon)
