“Homeless Jesus” sculpture
rejected by two cathedrals St.
Michael’s Cathedral in Toronto
and St. Patrick’s Cathedral
in New York.
It is time for our annual Christmas letter. This year we will get the letter and cards out before Christmas since Pat is at home on sick leave due to her hip replacement. So, due to her temporary disability, she has more time to do things like the letter and card.
On a number of occasions I have talked about how our curses, a bad hip, can become a blessing, Christmas letter done before Christmas. A friend staying overnight came back from visiting another friend with a copy of the local Catholic newspaper profile about me in April, 2001. The title of the profile was “He’s blessed, cursed with nagging social conscience”. The article was about my curses and blessing being the same and came out right after I had been fired from my job as youth minister at Gesu because of my advocacy for a local mental health clinic getting a zoning permit. The problem was the new location for the clinic, that was helping my son, Pater, was located near Marquette University High school where I had attended. The Jesuit high school and many neighbors opposed the clinic getting the permit based on a ‘stereotype’ or stigma of persons with mental illnesses. I had my firing reversed but then I was made “an offer I could not resist” or be fired again. I took the offer and left Gesu parish with shame and fame.
Today at Church I saw a saintly woman who founded and directed for 21 years a day shelter for the homeless. The shelter had expanded and grown to be a valuable source of aide for the homeless. Three white suburban women had become the board of directors of the non-profit and after a feud about adding more persons to the Board fired her. Legally they had the right and after a month of emotional wounds she is recovering. She was talking with another church member who had been on the staff at Gesu parish for nineteen years, including the time I was there, who was suddenly fired without explanation. I looked around the Church hall and there were a number of persons present who were ‘rejected’, fired, let go, arrested and one even excommunicated. I welcomed my friend to the ‘reject’ club which is not really a club but a growing movement. Our founder was Jesus, the greatest ‘reject’ of all time that came for the poor and ‘rejected’ only to be one himself. To be accepted can be a blessed or a curse; to be rejected can be a blessing or a curse.
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