CHARITIES, AND CHARITY

    The poet once wrote, “In Spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.” And for us, “In January a pastor’s thoughts turn to thoughts of Catholic Charities.” Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper, et in saecula saeculorum! But I want to unpack the word “charity,” coming from the Latin caritas. What does it mean?

    Caritas is related to the Italian “caro,” meaning “dearest or beloved.” It is a greeting of great affection to someone close to you in heart and mind and spirit. And so, it seems that “charity” is surely the active response to someone dear to us. But I doubt that is the first thing that comes to mind when we hear the phrase “Catholic Charities”!

That’s understandable, and perhaps that’s even OK. Remember what I quoted from St Mother Teresa: “If you cannot do great things, do small things with great love. If you cannot do them with great love, do them with a little love. If you cannot do them with a little love, do them anyway—action leads to love.” And so, the appeal is made, we commit our dollars to the drive, and we give little thought to it all beyond (perhaps) the vague hope that the money will be spent in service to those who need it (whoever they are). This, for us, is action without ‘love’ since we have no connection with those who will be helped—and ‘love’ requires some sort of connection.

When I am in Italy (and when those who join me in July will also be there), I have many opportunities for ‘charity,’ especially on the streets of Rome. Beggars of one kind or another, street people or gypsies or simple panhandlers, are as ubiquitous as the Roman ruins and the Christian monuments. This raises new possibilities.

We might toss a coin or two onto the blankets where they are stretched out, especially in the pedestrian underpass leading from the far side of the Vatican to St Peter’s Square. We might see them and have a certain amount of pity (not the purest form of ‘love’) for them. We might do this out of a feeling of guilt (I have so much; they have so little), or perhaps of real concern (How did they wind up in this condition?). We might refuse (After all, they’ll only spend it on drugs). But (language barriers aside) we will not learn of their stories because we won’t stop. And we know we can’t offer a coin to each and every one of them—there are too many. So we choose one or two, and then we keep walking past. This is a little thing with a little love.

Every now and then, though, we might actually have an encounter—a serious meeting of hearts. There have been a few times for me, when in Rome, that this is exactly what has happened: a gypsy woman with her children on the steps of St Paul’s Outside the Walls, a double-amputee on the sidewalk on Via del Corso, and another crippled person on the edge of Piazza Farnese. These are rare encounters for me, but by listening to them and their story, I found myself truly engaging/encountering them as persons and not simply objects of pity. I was glad for the encounter, and I grew from it. This is still not “little things with great love,” but it’s at least a step up from tossing a €2 coin and walking on.

Catholic Charities will almost never offer us the opportunity to have this kind of encounter, though our St Vincent de Paul Society will. Through them we can have the chance to do little things even with little love. Join them. Or at least, make your contribution to the Catholic Charities Appeal and be open to the possibility that action leads to love.                                                                                            -Fr. David