As we look forward to Christ's coming kingdom, we remember the Gospel for the feast of Christ the King - and it's call to works of Charity. This week Jesus makes that call more urgent; stay awake, and be ready because that Kingdom is near at hand. He tells his disciples to be found at their work. Our "work" when boiled down to its essence, is to make Christ known to the world through prayer, fasting and almsgiving. If we lack in one of these areas we lack in all of them; prayer needs sacrifice and sacrifice needs mercy.
In the Seminary, much like priests in the Parish, we only took one day off a week – the Saturday. It was the only day there were no liturgies in college, no morning and evening prayer and no Mass, so we had to go somewhere else for Mass. My favourite place to go was a Church on the other side of the Piazza Farnese, Santissima Trinità Dei Pellegrini – the Church of the Most Holy Trinity of the Pilgrims. The Church was and is still run by a group of priests who belonged to the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter, priests who only celebrated the Traditional Latin Mass.
Sitting on the steps of the Church as you went in was a young homeless man named Gaetano, with a slightly ragged looking Pitbull terrier. Rome has many different resources to keep people from sleeping on the street, a lot of them provided by the Church, but as with many western countries not everybody could be kept from the streets. People who had problems with drugs or alcohol, especially when they didn’t want to be helped with those problems were more often than not the ones who couldn’t find anywhere to stay. Gaetano was one of those, he had a drug problem which kept him from finding anywhere else to stay – so on dry nights he’d sleep on the Church steps and on wet nights he’d go to a nearby bridge and sleep under that.
And yet, for all his troubled life, Gaetano found a little grace on the steps of Santissima Trinita Dei Pellegrini. He was often seen with a broom sweeping the steps and the street outside the Church “It’s my home and I want it to be tidy” he would say. He would go in each morning to greet the saints whose relics were housed in the altars around the Church. On one occasion the priests found him trying to “fix” the loose paving slabs in the Church floor.
“Gaetano, what are you doing?” he asked.
“Fixing the marble! This is dangerous. I’m not doing it for money. I am doing it because it’s God’s house, and God’s house is my house too.”
He told the priests people were nicer to him there than anywhere else, and he felt happy to be there.
Unfortunately, as is often the case with young men living on the streets, Gaetano fell very ill and had to be taken to hospital. One of the priests, Don Vilmar, went to see him a few times. He gave him the last rites, and prayed with him before he died. He was 33 years old. At the last, the parish confraternity – lay men and women – arranged his funeral: a full High Mass, celebrated with all possible solemnity, for this man who had slept on the steps of the Church.
In his homily at the funeral, Don Vilmar said something which touched me deeply, that I want to share with you as well.
Gaetano’s death is a great sorrow for everyone, because in the depths of our souls, we all feel a bit responsible. He was one of Christ’s least brothers, because he needed immense help in both his body and soul. More than money, he needed sincere affection and possibilities.
How many times did we return his spontaneous “good evening” with indifference, coldness, or haste? How many times did we walk past him, without even looking at him, when he was not well? “As often as you have done these things to one of the least of these my brethren, you have done it to me.”
As often as you have done these things to one of the least of these my brethren, you have done it to me. That was our Gospel last week, for the feast of Christ the King. As we enter into these first few weeks of Advent, our readings all look forward with joy to the coming Kingdom of Christ. And yet, in the back of our minds, we hear the words he spoke in last week’s Gospel; “As often as you have done these things to one of the least of these my brethren, you have done it to me.”
This takes on a particular urgency this week, as Jesus warns the disciples to Stay awake. The Kingdom is like a master who has set His servants to work and will come back when they don’t expect Him. Stay awake, and hope to be found at your work.
What is our work? What are we called to do?
I’ve included in this week’s Newsletter thought, an excerpt from a Homily by St Peter Chrysologus, one of the Church Fathers and Doctor of the Church, who lays out in beautiful clarity the bare essence of the Christian Mission in all its simplicity; to pray, to fast, and to give alms. Three inseparable disciplines, he writes; fasting is the soul of prayer, and almsgiving is the lifeblood of fasting. If we lack any one of these three, we lack them all.
Prayer, if it is to be effective, needs sacrifice. When we pray, we ask God for what we need, and we fast as a sacrifice in unity with this prayer: we offer God something of ourselves when we fast.
But fasting without almsgiving, sacrifice without mercy, is dead; it's like a field without water, St Peter Chrysologus says, and following this farming metaphor he goes further
When you fast, if your mercy is thin your harvest will be thin; when you fast, what you pour out in almsgiving overflows into your barn. Therefore, do not lose by saving, but gather in by scattering. Give to the poor, and you give to yourself. You will not be allowed to keep what you have refused to give to others.
The work we have been set, of witnessing to Christ in the world comes down to this; that we are devout and constant in prayer, that we are cheerful in fasting, and that we are generous in our giving.
It is good to support a charity, or to promote a cause that you think will better the lives of others, but these keep us a step removed from those we are called to serve. It is by far better to give what you have to someone who is in need of it. Sometimes that isn’t money. Sometimes the alms we give are a kind word, or an hour of our time to a person who’s struggling, or a short while to attend a funeral.
Another Church Father, Saint John Chrysostom, is often quoted as saying “if you cannot recognise Christ in the beggar at the Church door, you will not find Him in the Chalice.”
In these weeks of Advent, as we look forward to Christ’s coming as King, and look back on His coming as man in Bethlehem, we must remember to seek Him also in our neighbour; to find Christ in them, so that Christ might be found in us.
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