Friends,
Yesterday, in our visit with Saint Matthew, I shared a hope for next year: a Matthew 25 Society, through which this community might give an enduring, practical shape to the care Jesus asks of us to put out into the world. Caring for the vulnerable as Jesus asked us to do for him.
I’ve kept thinking about it.
There is already good growing here. Kathy described what this work means to her:
“We are all searching for answers and your work takes us deeper into what it means to be a real Christian”
And a reader writing as Jcopebear told me:
“Father Vitale, thank you for giving a voice to my beliefs and helping me to clearly see that I’m not alone in my feelings and search for that which is pleasing to God.”
I am grateful that something we do here can reach someone that way. A person understands their faith more deeply. Someone discovers they have company. Those are reasons to keep going, and they make me wonder how many other people are still waiting to find us.
We could stop here and congratulate ourselves. But I look at Message From the Margins and see a sapling. It has taken root. We have begun to see what it might become. I want to give it the years and the care it needs to grow into a tree that bears good fruit for people we have not even met.
The Matthew 25 Society belongs to that hope. There is work to do before I can tell you how it would operate or what we could responsibly undertake. The first step is making the ministry that would carry it financially steady enough to plan beyond the next piece.
Jesus tells His disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.”
Let me be honest with you. There are now 11,000 people in this community, and fewer than three in every hundred support the ministry financially. I am grateful for those people. Their generosity helps me keep writing and makes these reflections available to everyone.
But carrying this work into the future will take more of us. If one in ten of the people who read these reflections every day became a supporting member, I could plan with much greater confidence. We could give the Matthew 25 Society the time and attention it deserves, and begin building something I hope will serve people long after I am here to write the morning reflection.
That matters to me. I would like the good we have begun together to outlive us.
There is work for us here in the vineyard. You do some of it when you send a reflection to a friend, welcome someone into the conversation, or pray for this community. But there are bills to pay and hours to give to the work, which require dependable financial support.
If you read regularly and have room in your budget, I am asking you to become a supporting member today. You already know what this ministry brings into your life. Help me make it available to the person who has yet to find us.
I would love to look back on this conversation next year and be able to show you what we began.
A few thoughts on thoughts and prayers
Learning to pray for one another, and to recognize the love we have to give.
If you’re anything like me, this familiar phrase no longer carries a sense of peace and tranquitity with it.
By the time a politician offers “thoughts and prayers,” many Americans have already stopped listening.
We hear it after a mass shooting, before the families have even begun to comprehend what has happened. The statements arrive. Then we watch people with the authority to pursue change decline to do so. After enough repetitions, the words themselves begin to sound like an announcement that nothing further should be expected.
I understand why people have grown angry with that. Prayer deserves better than being used to close a discussion about responsibilities that remain unfulfilled.
But I also think about the person who hears that anger and wonders whether it has become foolish to tell a grieving friend, “I’m praying for you.” Someone who means it. Someone who remembers the name while washing the dishes, or brings it to Mass, or lies awake asking God to help a person they love.
When someone tells me they are praying for me, I want to be able to receive that. I need other people’s prayers. I also want to mean the promise when I make it myself, even when I have no idea what I could possibly do about the trouble someone has brought me.
Perhaps you know that feeling. You care about the person. You wish you had an answer. For now, you have their name, and you can bring it to God.
Francis and the question of supper
There is a saying often attributed to Pope Francis: “You pray for the hungry, then you feed them. That is how prayer works.”
I like it, although I can’t be confident Pope Francis actually said them.
What Francis did say, in an October 2016 audience about feeding the hungry, was this:
“There is always someone who is hungry or thirsty and who needs me. I cannot delegate this to another.”
He was bringing a large subject close enough to touch. Hunger becomes harder to discuss at a safe distance when the person who needs supper is standing in front of us. Francis’s audience
Suppose the person you are praying for has been at the hospital all day. You cannot change what the doctor will say. But as you think about the hours they have spent there, you wonder whether they have eaten. You could ask. You may even be able to bring something over.
That does not mean every prayer comes with an additional assignment. Some of you are already carrying responsibilities that would exhaust someone who saw only half of them. Your neighbor may need help at the very hour you need to give your spouse medication, pick up a grandchild from school, or just lie down and watch some Netflix.
And there will be days when you can do nothing further. You may find that difficult to admit, especially when you love the person. I do think we can bring that difficulty into prayer and keep trying to solve it there, and God who is waiting for us will help us come up with a better plan.
We can tell Him that we are afraid. We can ask Him to help in ways we cannot. The person we love is already known to Him, including everything we have failed to understand about their situation. We may finish praying with the same unanswered questions. We have nevertheless entrusted someone to God.
A saint who understood that you have a life
Saint Francis de Sales has some useful company to offer here. In his Introduction to the Devout Life, he explains that devotion must be “modified according to the strength, the calling, and the duties of each individual.” He asks us to consider how little sense it would make for a working person to spend the whole day in church while neglecting the work that person has to do.
It is easy to read about the saints and begin planning a spiritual life for someone with an entirely different set of obligations. Francis de Sales asks us to look at the life we have. Who already depends on us? What would happen to them if we pursued the religious practices we admire without considering those responsibilities?
Think of the person caring for a spouse who cannot safely be left alone. An appeal for volunteers arrives, and the familiar guilt begins. Other people seem to be doing so much. Meanwhile, this person has prepared food, attended to medication, listened to the same worry several times, and helped someone through another difficult morning.
Yet when asked what they do for the church, they may say, “Oh, very little these days.” I wonder how often we overlook the care that has become so familiar we no longer count it.
If you recognize your own morning in that description, there may be a different conversation to have with God. You may need someone to take a turn so that you can sleep. You may need to admit how angry or weary you have become. You can bring Him that, too. Caring for someone does not make you cease to need care yourself.
And if you are the person being cared for, you do not have to compensate for your illness by being spiritually useful. We can pray together through a day when you have very little to say.
What we begin to hear
The first reading for September 22 gives us a sentence to carry into all this:
“To do what is right and just is more acceptable to the LORD than sacrifice.”
A few verses later, Proverbs warns against shutting our ears to the poor while expecting our own cries to be heard. Proverbs 21:3, 13
This wisdom comes from within a life of worship. It asks the worshiper to consider how the person outside the sanctuary is being treated. Our attention to God should make room for hearing that person.
Notice the image of the closed ear. There is a difference between having no money to give and refusing to listen to the people who need to be heard. We may be unable to provide what someone needs and still take them seriously.
Suppose a friend tells us that she is frightened about her husband’s illness. We want to reassure her. We may start supplying explanations, encouragement, and making suggestions before she has finished telling us what the doctor said.
I understand the impulse. It is hard to listen to someone we love describe a situation we cannot fix. I can be so eager to find something helpful to say that I stop hearing what the person is trying to tell me.
But perhaps she needs a little time to say that she is afraid. Perhaps everyone has been telling her to stay positive, and she has begun to feel that her fear is an inconvenience to the people trying to support her.
What happens if we let her finish? She may tell us something we had not understood. The test results frighten her, but so does the thought of going home to an empty house while her husband remains in the hospital. Now, when we pray for her, we know a little more about what she is facing. We might also know what to ask when we call again.
Sometimes we will realize that we have put off calling because we do not know what to say. We may have to make the call without solving that first. It is possible to tell a friend that we have been thinking about them and then let them do most of the talking.
When someone interrupts
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Lutheran pastor and theologian, understood how ordinary Christian service can look. In Life Together, while discussing practical assistance within a community, he writes:
“We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God”
He goes on to describe interruptions arriving through people who need help. He is particularly searching about Christians and theologians who consider their own work too important to interrupt.
I would like to discuss that with him, provided we can find a time convenient for me.
Kidding Kidding.
What catches my attention is that Bonhoeffer is discussing the practical inconveniences of living with other people. We can want to be generous and still resent being asked at the wrong time. The resentment can surprise us. We thought we meant the prayer.
Perhaps we did mean it. We are also finding out how attached we were to the afternoon we had planned. There is something to learn about ourselves before deciding what to do. An irritated first response does not settle whether we can help.
Some days we can make room. Other days someone else already has a claim on that time, or we have reached the end of our strength. We can say so without making promises we will later regret. Over time, we may become more honest about both our reluctance and our limits. I would count that as growth worth praying for.
A promise we can mean
So, when a friend tells you something painful, you can still say, “I’ll pray for you.” You can mean it with your whole heart.
Then give yourself some help remembering. Write the name down if that is useful. Bring the person into a prayer you already say. If you forget until the following day, pray then. God can manage a prayer that arrives without your having maintained a perfect system.
You might ask whether a call later in the week would be welcome. You might offer a meal, if that is something you can reasonably provide. Or you might simply continue praying through a situation in which you have no further part to play.
We need discernment about that. A public official with authority to act carries responsibilities different from those of a distant friend. A pastor has duties that cannot be handed to the most generous person in the congregation. Within our own relationships, too, care needs to be shared. We will spend more time with those distinctions tomorrow in What is mine to do? Thoughts and Prayers Part Two.
I keep thinking about that friend going home from the hospital. We may have listened badly the first time. We may have offered advice she did not need. We can still remember her tonight, ask God to care for her husband, and ask for the patience to hear her when we next speak.
We have something to learn in that friendship. With God’s help, we can learn it. And if we are able to bring supper, we can ask what she would like.
And Let Us Pray…
Lord Jesus,
We bring You the people whose names we carry, those we have promised to remember, and those whose needs have frightened us because we do not know how to help.
Be near to those who are hungry, ill, grieving, or alone. Bring them the care they need. Help us listen when they tell us what would be useful.
Teach us to recognize the love we can offer today. Give us patience to listen, courage to follow through, and humility to ask for help. When we forget or fall short, help us receive Your mercy and begin again. When we have reached our limits, give us rest.
Strengthen those who care for others day after day. Bring companions alongside them. Give those entrusted with authority the wisdom and resolve to serve the people who depend on their decisions.
Receive what we can offer, and hold those we cannot reach. Keep us faithful to the people we place before You.
Amen.
And Now It’s Your Turn
Has someone offered prayer in a way that helped you feel remembered? What did they understand about what you needed? Share only what you are comfortable making public, and please protect other people’s private circumstances.
Share this reflection
If you know someone who takes every need to heart, send this to them. I hope it helps them recognize both the good they can offer and the care they are already giving.
Thank you for spending this time with me. I hope today’s reflection gives you something useful to bring into your own prayer and relationships.
If you have been meaning to support Message From the Margins, please take that step today. A supporting subscription helps me plan the work ahead, including exploring how the Matthew 25 Society might become something this community can responsibly build. Thank you for helping give that hope a future.