An Appeal for Love
by Fr. Roger J. Landry - May 5, 2006
Jesus told us in St. Matthew's Gospel that when he comes at the end of time to judge the living and the dead, he will separate us into two groups. On his right, he will place those are saved. On his left he will wave those who are condemned.
To those on his right he will say: "Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me."
He told us that the stunned crowd of eternal victors will then ask when did any of these good deeds personally for him, and he promised he would respond "Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of my brothers and sisters, you did it to me" (Mt 25:34-40).
The Catholic Charities Appeal which begins this weekend is an opportunity to take care of Christ in disguise in all of these ways and more. The Appeal funds food pantries and aid to those without access to even liquid sustenance. It embraces the immigrants coming as strangers to a new land, helps with their material needs and offers English-as-a-second-language and citizenship programs for them. It funds AIDS ministry, hospital chaplaincies and several nursing homes in the diocese where the sick and infirm are cared for, body and soul. It finances prison chaplaincies and evangelization, and helps with half-way houses to assist prisoners to leave crime behind and reintegrate into society.
The good of the appeal does not stop there, though, because Christ's list of corporal and spiritual works of mercy was not meant to be exhaustive. The Appeal underwrites the Sunday television Mass that allows tens of thousands of the homebound to continue to participate in Mass. It funds the pro-life initiatives of the diocese. It bankrolls care for pregnant women as well as adoption services and foster care. It fuels the chaplaincies at area colleges. It enables the diocese to run summer camps for handicapped children. It finances youth and young adult ministry. It subsidizes individual and family counseling. It pays for support programs for the widowed, divorced and separated. It sponsors abuse prevention programs. It sustains the training of permanent deacons, the importance of whose ministry in the Church and in our diocese continues to grow.
As Catholics, we all have the duty to care for Christ in the least of our brothers and sisters, and the Lord tells us that we will be judged on whether we've loved him or stiffed him in the person of our neighbor.
There are many ways to carry out that duty to be modern Good Samaritans. While we can always give generously and directly to a particular apostolate or charity, there's something particularly important about giving to the diocesan Catholic Charities Appeal.
Pope Benedict described it in his encyclical Deus Caritas Est. "Love of neighbor, grounded in the love of God, is first and foremost a responsibility for each individual member of the faithful, but it is also a responsibility for the entire ecclesial community at every level: from the local community to the particular Church and to the Church universal in its entirety. As a community, the Church must practice love."
The "particular Church" of the Diocese of Fall River, as a community, needs to practice love. This is one of the most important signs of our ecclesial character, when we work together as disciples and as one give of ourselves for those for whom others so often fail to sacrifice or care. In the early Church, Christians were so distinguished by their love for those in need that even pagan leaders, while they were threatening to put Christians to death for the faith, were deeply fascinated by Christians' love for those who did not or could not love them in return.
Tangible deeds of self-sacrificial love are one of the most important components of the Church's re-evangelization efforts. In an age when many are questioning the goodness of the Church after the clergy scandals, there is an even greater need to show the real self-giving face of the Church as a whole. This true image of the Church is of a mystical body working together to love Christ in others: when the multitudes of Catholic faithful through their sacrifices and prayers cooperate with those on the front lines of pastoral care to be the Good Samaritan to hundreds of thousands in the south coast region.
This is the way all of us in this particular Church of Fall River can proclaim by our body language the Gospel Christ entrusted to us. It is also the way by which, God-willing, our whole diocese may reconvene in the Church triumphant at Christ's glorious right side.
Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.
