“The greatest challenge of the
day is: how to bring about a
revolution of the heart, a
revolution which has to start
with each one of us?”
Dorothy Day

Early this morning I took a friend to Sam’s Club to purchase some fish. I normally do not shop at Wal-Mart/Sam’s Club, I say it is against my religion, but since I was there I looked into purchasing a bag of fish. Not to my surprise the back of the frozen fish bags said “A Product of China”. I try to stay away from “Made in China” products, especially food since the practice of cutting corners to make money in China makes me wonder what I am really eating. What are the fish fed?

In my email today I got a note today from Wal-Mart workers who are trying to change the treatment of workers at Wal-Mart from within. They talk about victories and about issues they were working on. However, one assertion really struck me ”the Waltons”, family of founder Sam Wall, “now has as much wealth as 43% of Americans combined.” Although we frequently hear these figures about how a small percentage of Americans have the majority of wealth in this nation it still strikes me as a tragedy.

This is especially true today when my wife and I made some home visits to people in need in North Central Milwaukee. The typical call is with mom with a number of children in the household who needs basics like stove, refrigerator and beds. We do what we can but greedy landlords and the epidemic of bed bugs with racism are keeping people down and leaving the poor without much chance of getting out of it. Many households have many generations under one household, mother, children, cousins, grandparent under one household. One friend of mine has four generations in her household and struggles to provide food and heat.

The poverty of minority groups, like African Americans or Hispanics is growing at a tremendous rate why the State and Rich take more and more away from them. Yet I find in these homes of the poor a good spirit and hope. There is a spirit of gratitude for the beds or appliances you can provide and hope their children will one day escape the poverty and suffering they face.

People criticize people doing the works of mercy as just applying band aids not creating “systematic change.” Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker also faced this charge. Her response and mine is that Jesus in the Gospels commands us to do the works of mercy saying that what we do the least of people we do to Jesus. As I tried to say in the parable Thy Kingdom Come on Earth as It is Heaven the simple act of providing a bed for a child so he or she no longer needs to sleep on the floor could have a tremendous and revolutionary impact.

If we all live the corporate and spiritual works of mercy there would be revolution in this country. As Dorothy Day used to say we would not have homelessness if everyone took in one homeless person. There would be no great inequality of wealth if everyone practiced the Christian teaching of sharing their abundance with others in need. We can elect all the people we want, pass all the laws we want, yet revolutionary change will only happen when there is a revolution of the heart and people and groups of people live the Gospel in daily life. But we cannot really change other persons but only ourselves. So the real revolution is the revolution of the heart.

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