Witnessing
As part of my observance of the Year of Faith proclaimed by Pope Benedict XVI, I will be receiving e-mail snippets every day in an effort to read the Catechism in a year.
Today I received the first of these e-mail messages, containing the first ten paragraphs of the Catechism. I was immediately struck by paragraph 3, which outlines our obligations as Christians:
[3] Those who with God’s help have welcomed Christ’s call and freely responded to it are urged on by love of Christ to proclaim the Good News everywhere in the world. This treasure, received from the apostles, has been faithfully guarded by their successors. All Christ’s faithful are called to hand it on from generation to generation, by professing the faith, by living it in fraternal sharing, and by celebrating it in liturgy and prayer.
We are called to profess the faith, to live the faith, and to celebrate the faith. Thereby, we become witnesses to the faith.
The Pope hit these points in his Motu Proprio Porta Fidei, as I noted earlier. I didn’t realize he was pulling this directly from the Catechism.
The thing that struck me was the middle item: living the faith “in fraternal sharing”. I wonder how many Christians today live their faith that way?
Every day in downtown Seattle, I pass dozens of homeless men and women, clustered around the Seattle Union Gospel Mission. When I pass in the morning, they’re generally queuing up for breakfast.
Many of them have slept on the sidewalk nearby, or in the entrances of boarded up storefronts, or in the nearby park. There are days where the sidewalk across the street is covered in blankets, sleeping bags, and cardboard.
Now, I donate to various charities that try to tackle the problems of homelessness and hunger, and nobody in that crowd has ever asked me for help or money. I pray the Chaplet of Divine Mercy every day for them and the other wandering pilgrims upon the earth.
But it breaks my heart to see them, to look into their eyes.
Surely, in the name of “fraternal sharing” there is more that I can do?