He Has Sent Me To Bring Good News To The Poor
Third Sunday of Advent
“He has sent me to bring good news to the poor; to bind up hearts that are broken”. These are the words of the Lord’s anointed in the reading from the prophet Isaiah which we hear at mass this Sunday. These are the words with which, in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus inaugurates his public ministry.
I was very struck, and perhaps you were too, by a recent report on the BBC News. It came from Burnley in Lancashire in the north of England and featured two Christian ministers, pastor Mick Fleming of the “Church in the Street” and Fr Alex Frost, an Anglican parish priest. Both wept as they talked about the challenges faced by the people whom each day they were helping. They later featured in one of the Sunday papers.
Pastor Mick visits homes and distributes food. There was film of large numbers of people crowding around his van: it’s hard to keep social distance when you are poor and hungry. The Pastor told of how he had put bags of food on a family’s kitchen table and the children were so hungry they tore the bags open. Gas and electricity are luxuries for many. What’s the point of taking them food if can’t heat it? Now he delivers cooked hot food as well. Loneliness is one of the biggest scourges of the coronavirus. Too many live in isolation and cannot cope. The report included his visit to Viv, aged 55, who became so depressed she didn’t eat for a week.
Last weekend, 500 churchmen, our own Catholic leaders included, wrote to the Chancellor of the Exchequer asking him to bring relief to the household debts of millions needing to choose between affording food and falling behind in rent.
Following the broadcast, Pastor Mick and Fr Alex set up an internet fundraising page and immediately were inundated with offers of help and within a week collected £95,000.
The BBC news reported that in the most deprived parts of the country the death rates from the virus are twice what they are in more affluent areas. Nonetheless, the needs here in this city, as we know, are great as well.
One of my roles is to be superior of the Jesuits in London. In many places, my brothers and their partners in ministry are doing a great deal to help. A week ago, I was told that the number of food parcels delivered since March by volunteers with the Jesuit Refugee Service in Wapping was about to reach 2000. In Stamford Hill, our parish distributes food to the poor each day. Many of us know about the great work of the central London Catholic churches, in which Farm Street plays a leading role, feeding and meeting other needs of the homeless. At St Anselm’s in Southall our parish priest set up a night shelter with other faith groups and now powerfully advocates for the homeless in West London.
In his recent encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis wrote about the need for a new culture, one of the features of which would be “gratuitousness”: the ability to do some things simply because they are good in themselves. We received life freely; we paid nothing for it. Consequently, all of us are able to give without expecting anything in return.
Pastor Mick, Fr Alex and all their and our volunteers understand this. But the Pope’s point has wider implications. As I read him, he thinks a new culture can help promote both a new politics – one that works for a social and political order has “social charity”, a love for and the promotion of the common good, for its soul – and a new kind of politician. He or she would be less interested in his standing in the opinion polls, more focused on “How much love did I put into my work?” “What did I do for the progress of our people?” “What mark did I leave on the life of society?”. Such people are indeed “good news for the poor”.
Fr Michael Holman SJ