mercy

Wednesday Witness: The Father’s Heart … In Us

/ J. Thorp / Leave a comment

Last Saturday I was blessed to go to the Men’s Lenten Event at St. Michael Catholic Church, with our former associate Father Nathan LaLiberte presenting. Father Nathan celebrated Mass before the event, and his homily left a mark on my heart for ministering to those in need.

The gospel was the familiar Parable of the Prodigal Son (or the Forgiving Father). He opened by noting that this powerful and thought-provoking story only appears in St. Luke’s gospel. Why did a Gentile include this story when the Jewish evangelists did not? Father suggested a Jewish audience, like many rules-based Christians today, would struggle to accept the superabundant mercy of the father in the story.

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Wednesday Witness: Borders and Boundaries

/ J. Thorp / Leave a comment

A few years ago, I worked for the Church of Saint Andrew in Elk River. The parish had a strong charism of service to those in need and a growing Hispanic community. I was able to get to know a few immigrant families through the Faith Formation and sacrament programs, as well as the parish’s Hispanic liaison. The experience gave my valuable perspective on the conditions that might cause someone to uproot their family and cross our southern border (whether legally or illegally) in search of a better life.

Saint Andrew also had an annual mission trip to Mexico. Invariably, the parishioners who traveled and served in the barrios south of the border came back with one overriding impression: Poverty there is often a deeper, darker thing than poverty here at home.

As a result of these encounters, I often found myself asking: What would I be willing to do to protect and provide for my family?

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Wednesday Witness: Corporal Works of Mercy – Bury the Dead

/ J. Thorp / Leave a comment

These Wednesday Witness columns essentially track what the Lord is doing in my heart and life regarding the seven Corporal Works of Mercy:

  • to feed the hungry
  • to give drink to the thirsty
  • to clothe the naked
  • to shelter the homeless
  • to comfort the sick
  • to ransom the captive (to visit prisoners)
  • to bury the dead

If you look closely, one of these works is not like the others: While the first six Corporal Works concern the needs and comfort of living persons, the seventh focuses on our bodily remains. As a result, it has often seemed like the work I’m least likely to carry out in any practical sense, since I am not a minister, mortician, or cemetery attendant.

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Wednesday Witness: Hard Choices

/ J. Thorp / Leave a comment

The coldest I have ever been was during a late-season, black-powder deer hunt. I was sitting atop a ladder stand in the dark in January. The morning was bitterly cold following a storm that dropped more than two feet of fluffy snow, leaving clear skies and wind in its wake.

I had dressed for a long, cold sit while a friend attempted to push deer toward me from the other side of the section. I had not dressed for the half-mile march through knee-deep snow and buried brush that preceded my climbing the stand. By the time I was settled, I was also sweating, and once I was stationary, I shivered beneath my layers.

Even after sunrise, the air was frigid. My fingers ached as I held my rifle, and I clenched and unclenched my toes inside my boots, trying to maintain some semblance of feeling. (It was weeks before they lost the pin-prickly feeling from that morning.)

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Wednesday Witness: Charity by the Numbers

/ J. Thorp / Leave a comment

You’ve all heard the adage, “Bad things come in threes.” It seems to play out time and again—one thing leads to another and another. Of course, once the seed is planted, we look for three, and when we identify the third event, we restart the counter. Sure enough, three more catastrophes are coming if we wait long enough.

But I can’t dismiss the old wisdom entirely. In my time working with the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, I have yet to encounter a neighbor who wasn’t juggling multiple problems—a cluster of issues snowballing into a crisis.

Sometimes it’s bad luck. Sometimes, poor planning. Sometimes it’s a series of personal choices we wish they could take back. Sometimes it’s systemic—problems often seem to progress faster than solutions. And sometimes it’s generational poverty, addiction, and sin taking its toll, rippling out to touch everyone in an ever-widening circle.

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