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Giving Drink to Thristy
Works of Mercy

People consistently try to separate the works of mercy, like feeding the hungry, from working for systematic change, making structural change in our society.

On one side we have people call the works of mercy, providing beds to those in need, as band-aides. Yet when the same person works on structural change they care call other names. This reminds me of a well know quote by Dom Hélder Pessoa Câmara, archbishop in Brazil. “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist.”

Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker faced similar criticism in the 60’s. In one of her letters she says: “We have heard this same word, a ‘band- aide to a cancer,’ from Boston and Milwaukee and even from the Australian bush within the last year. Perhaps it is only those words of the gospel about the corporal works of mercy, which in a way include the spiritual works of mercy, that has kept us going all these years. We are commanded over and over again by Jesus Christ himself to do these things. “What we do for the least of these, we do for him.”

Jesus in the Gospel brings us the Way to make revolutionary change, to make “the Kingdom of God on earth.” But His Way starts with change of one self, doing the corporal and works of mercy, spreads to communal practice like the St. Vincent de Paul Society and eventually brings a Nation to change. People forget that in Matthew 25 when Jesus was talking about doing the corporal and spiritual works of mercy he was not taking about individuals but about groups, organizations and nations. Dorothy Day said: “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?”

In the Gospel and in life there is no difference between doing the works of mercy, visiting the sick, or making systematic change. We just do acts of kindness, speak the truth, do works of mercy and resistance and the world will change. When Frédéric Ozanam and a small group of students at the University of Parish started the Society of St. Vincent de Paul in Paris by making person to person home visits to those in need who would imagine how this simple act would lead to one of the largest Catholic lay organizations in the world?

I tried unsuccessfully in the parable “Thy Kingdom Come on Earth as it is in Heaven to show how a simple home visit and works of mercy by Vicentians could make a major and sustainable change in the life of child and community. But no one had ears to hear and the money that could have made a radical and systematic change in the North Central Milwaukee community was hid away somewhere in a band for ‘future use.’

The Gospel of Nonviolent Love as well as many sacred writings points the way to make deep systematic changes to the our society and to world, ways to end poverty and violence.

Dorothy Day would say if everyone took in one homeless person we could end homelessness tomorrow. So we talk and talk big change and miss the opportunity to make change around us. The works of mercy are the way to revolutionary change.

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