Struggling families, spectacles, and simple school meals
Fr. John Anthony Boughton
Recently I was made aware of a family in California that was living in an abandoned trailer with flat tires on the side of the road in Oakland. The father and mother had five little children that they were trying to raise there on the streets. Our brothers approached them and became aware of their situation and developed a relationship with them. One might have seen the family’s situation and decided that they should have called the local social authorities to have the children taken away from the father and mother who obviously were not providing for their children as they should. With a worldly set of glasses, one might see things that way.
But what kind of vision are we called as Christians to have? I write this on the heels of celebrating the feast of the Holy Family and I can’t help but think that one might have seen Joseph, Mary and the child Jesus with worldly eyes, too.
Their poverty was so dire that it necessitated them holing up in a cave. Joseph obviously appeared as such a “derelict father” that he couldn't provide worthy housing for his little family. “Shame!” With such a way of seeing, we would have missed seeing the Christ child altogether, not to mention his mother and holy Joseph.
Happily, our Friars didn’t call the authorities. They saw a struggling family doing everything it could just to stay together. So, they asked the couple the simple question that should be quickly found on every Christian tongue when encountering the poor, “How can we help you?” With a little ingenuity and making some connections, they were able to help the father find a good job, and to help the family secure a proper home. Those five children will be baptized into the Church shortly. Our Catholic faith impels us to see in the poor brothers and sisters in Christ, not as problems for somebody else to solve.
Mary’s Meals, which I have known and watched grow for many, many years now, does exactly that. It was inspired by Our Lady whose soul magnifies the Lord so that we can see Him more clearly. She also acts as corrective lens for our eyes, that too often see in worldly ways, and thus she helps us see Jesus in two of His most consistent disguises, in the Eucharist and in the poor. Mary’s Meals is truly one of the magnificent fruits of Medjugorje.
It is an organization of individuals who put on the eyeglasses of our Lady, as it were, to encounter Christ in the poor and to see and find ways to help them. Their system is ingenious in its simplicity and its efficacy. I am continually astounded by the sheer volume of children who are fed daily by Mary’s Meals. And they do it in the most human way possible, by building a means for a community of people who can work together so that children can eat and not have to go to school on empty stomachs. Isn’t that what the motherly heart of Mary would do? It is certainly how she would have us see it.
Fr. John Anthony Boughton, C.F.R., serves as a priest of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal in the South Bronx, New York, where his ministry is rooted on prayer, evangelization, and service to the poor.
JOIN US IN A PRAYER