We must be ready to give

BY SIMEON BANDA FSM

Old age has hit a widower who depends on begging. Look at the old man sleeping under the hedge outside Matola novitiate in Mozambique. Next to him, he has a variety of plastics and inside those there is food of different types. He got the food from well-wishers. He visits the novitiate to have something to eat of the left overs from our table, and often he takes something with him to eat  later.

Does that remind you of the story in the Bible of the woman who came to Jesus to ask for favours?

All of us are made in the image of God. We are brothers and sisters. This man does not have a bed or a mat. The earth is his mat. He cannot speak of shoes, and changing clothes for him is unheard of.

Do you chase away a fellow like this? No, he is made in the image of God and his dignity has to be preserved and protected. “I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me a drink. I was naked and you gave me clothes.”

In Africa’s urban centres, this man’s situation are experiences we have grown used to. We encounter these pathetic situations every day.

Here at the novitiate, the novice master urged us to have a good lunch and a lighter supper. Should we sleep on the cement floor too, without a cover? Or maybe sleep outside, across the flower hedge, like the man you see in the photo?

Witnessing abject poverty caused Bl Mother Teresa of Calcutta to found the Missionaries of Charity.

St Marcellin Champagnat, founder of my congregation, the Marist Brothers, also had time for the aged and the poor. We cannot send them away because they will die of hunger.

Almost all consecrated people claim to have something to do with the poor, especially with the most destitute.

The fellow you see in the photo has no house, no children and no grandchildren.

We, the people of Africa, traditionally have a special love for the aged, whom we call the source of wisdom. The extended family link had been our strong point for many generations. But today, we tend to mind our own business.

There is a Chichewa proverb: “Kakoma ponya mkawa akakhala galu uyang´ana ndi kwake.” It means: if you have something edible, put it in your mouth; like dogs, it is in their nature to look at those eating. This is our selfish way of showing indifference.

Sometimes when poor people die, others will mourn (and some may exaggerate their mourning). Isn’t it often the case that in life, when people needed necessities, they weren’t helped, but when they die, they receive clothes and perhaps even an expensive coffin which will disintegrate in the grave?

Our fasting, which the Church calls us to, should stir us to practical charity. We should not be afraid to help people like this Lazarus who sleeps so desperately in this photo.

We have to remember always how Jesus treated the people who now knock on our doors. He loved them, as he loved us all—so much so that he died for all humanity.

My fellow Chewa people have a saying to the effect that you do not die for others. It’s a false statement for those who follow Christ literally, as St Francis and all good saints that you know did.

The Polish priest Fr Maximillian Kolbe died in Auschwitz so that a fellow inmate, a family man, might live (as he did, into his 90s).

We must “die” for others in order to alleviate their poverty. If we are not prepared to die for others, then all our fasting, prayer and almsgiving have no meaning.