Pastor's Page:  "The Poor- Invisible No Longer"
(John 17.11)

When I was in high school I read an eye-opening book entitled "The Invisible Poor".

Poor people are of course everywhere, but they are not in our same social networks and
gatherings. To find the poor, we need to go out of our way. The poor are powerless. They have
no voice. If we assist Geri Kramer in our Parish Outreach providing food and clothing at least
temporarily to folks who are in need, we can find the poor.
For many days, our senses have been assaulted with the poverty of the people of Haiti, an
impoverishment exacerbated a thousand thousand times by the deaths of more than 150,000, and the homelessness of millions in that ravaged land.

The poor of Haiti have become visible. We have discovered that this is a country where
citizens live on two dollars a day in income. A country where the average life span is the lowest
in the Western Hemisphere at 40 years of age.

Our hearts and our Christian consciences have been severely afflicted and awakened. More
than $3000 was collected from our parish in the offertory the weekend we learned of the
earthquake in Haiti and its aftermath. As Pope John Paul II said so eloquently in his 1988
encyclical on social concerns "We cannot but embrace the immense multitudes of the hungry, the needy, the homeless, those without medical care and, above all, those without hope of a better future." It is the teaching of our church that the material goods of this world are originally meant for everyone.

The media coverage of the tragic situation in Haiti has been extraordinarily good. It has shaken us from apathy to action.
But poverty is a fact of life for most of the world's population. The World Bank has published data showing that worldwide there are 25-30,000 children who starve to death each day, 11 million a year More than 1 billion people live on less than one dollar a day.

Our own nation, with 6% of the world's population, controls 40% of the earth's wealth. Our current economic woes have caused some 35 million Americans to live below the poverty level set by our government.

Again Pope John Paul said it well, "Love for others, and in the first place love for the poor, in whom the church sees Christ himself, is made concrete in the promotion of justice."

Father Bruce