Grassroots

So I was at this event tonight, where this priest chap was talking about his work in Zimbabwe. You may see him on the street and think "_________" because if you saw him on the street you wouldn't think anything, you'd just walk straight past him without thinking anything. We do it all the time; we ignore people, even people we know, we don't look at people, we don't acknowledge.

Now this guy turns out to be a bloody saint. Not a 'self-professed, look at me working for UNICEF in front of all the cameras and holding little babies' saint. A proper self-less, humble person who acts, not for himself, but for other people. He says he looks after children who are orphaned by AIDS...not single orphaned, but double, i.e both their parents have died. They have no-one anymore. So this charity takes care of them, looks after them, feeds, clothes, houses them and even pays for their medicine. Of course the moneys there. It won't always be, but for the most part we can say 'yes I donated, I helped.' But out of us, who could say that they cuddled that child when their Mum and Dad died? Who could say that we entered Zimbabwe knowing full well that if the government saw us then they would imprison us and kill us? Who could say that they eat with lepers and people with cholera? I can't. It would take a lot of courage to do that. I'm not sure if I'm spiritually strong enough to do that.

At mass at the weekend the priest said that faith wasn't some inward thing. Faith has to be outward looking, it has to work from inside to out, to be transformed into action.

I suppose what I witnessed tonight was the telling of faith. True Faith (NO NOT NEW ORDER!) of a real kind. The kind that isn't done through countless reading of religious texts and saying 'hmmmm but if we look at what Augustine was saying blah blah blah." It is grass roots, it is on the ground, with the poorest of the poor. We're not saying here that God hates the rich. God loves all of His children. Its just that the older rich children take more from the poorer children and so God, as the Mother is telling the rich off and giving back to the poor what is theirs. This is what the liberation theologians were all about. Even today this message is fresh, it's new, but it's the root, the first drop of water from the fountain of Christianity. This is how the Gospel speaks to us. It's a liberating set of books telling the life of a liberator. That liberator is Jesus Christ...he doesn't mince around in gold vestments saying lots of nice prayers with candles and incence and all that stuff. He gets his hands dirty, mucks in with the farmers, the cleaners, the builders, the carpenters, he isn't bothered where you're from, but he espeically sees the good in the outcasts of society.