A few weeks ago I was walking with my two nieces towards a coffee shop where they can find their favourite chocolate bars and I can find my friends from a poor section of the area, and also a small cup of coffee. Inês is 4 years old and her sister, Maria, is 7 years old. It was such a wonderful feeling to hold those tiny childish hands inside my stronger and older hands. I don’t know who was enjoying the most. It was not mainly for safety but for the feelings of tenderness those two little angels were transmitting to me.
All of a sudden, without any previous warning, Maria tells me that her father, Énio, had told her: «When you give something to other people always give them the best of what you have». And I thought «What a father…». And I thought «How lucky Maria is to have a Christian father like that and a Christian mother who shares the same values!». «Always give to others the best of what you have». That means that her father is trying to break the shell of selfishness that covers all the children’s hearts and is trying to enlarge her heart to be able to hold God and all the world inside of it.
I was fascinated with this kind of message a father is trying to instill in a 7-year-old daughter. I think that the message Énio is trying to transmit to his daughter is that helping people is not an association or an activity, but a way of life. Maria’s mother, Alina, was still a young student of podiatry when she would spend long periods of time assisting the pilgrims to Our Lady of Fatima, taking care of their feet because all of them were walking and of course hurting their feet badly. Some were walking with their bare feet.
But… no more than three minutes later, Maria surprised me again with a poignant statement saying: «My Catechist said that we should never give money to the poor because they will spend it to buy alcohol and drugs». I thought that Catechists were supposed to teach about the project of Jesus that is: «to bring good news to the poor» (Luke 4: 18).
I could see that inside of that little head, with apparently small brains, there was a struggle between the «Give the best» from her father and «Don’t give money to the poor».
I tried to explain to Maria that the poor need money to buy food, medicine, transportation, clothes, doctor’s appointments, glasses to help with their sight, to take care of their teeth and so many things that are needed to live like human beings and children of God.
Then… I felt like crying! In this battle between Maria’s Catholic parents and a Catholic Catechist who is going to win? Who is going to lose? Then I remembered the words in a wonderful book written by a couple who spent two years living among the homeless, not to change them or help them but only to live the experience of being homeless. The name of the book is «When the excluded are the chosen ones». And their strong words that affected me deeply were: «The poor are always ACCUSED, JUDGED and CONDEMNED without being HEARD.»
Love and Peace
Fr. Bernardino Andrade