“If people are being downtrodden and mistreated, it’s our obligation, it’s our responsibility to speak out, not just for ourselves but for others.” ~ Alveda King
I was appalled yesterday to see an article in the Chicago newspaper that reported the police’s search for a serial shooter who is targeting, of all people, the homeless. Good Lord, it not like it is difficult enough already to be forced to life on the streets. Now, the homeless have to worry about some maniac targeting them. Thus far, two people have been killed while a few others have been shot.
From the time I was very young and attending Catholic grade school, I remember the nuns telling us that the poor and the homeless were tests to us from God and that we were failing the test. Why? Because we did not give special concern to the homeless, the poor, and the needy. Instead, we tend to ignore them. If a homeless person walks up to someone on the street, the other person tends to react in fear. They do not want to help the needy, they want to avoid or flee the needy.
We do know that there are also those who want to do more than avoid the needy. There are sick individuals in our society who target the needy, who hurt the needy, just so they can feel superior to someone else. They do not care about the harm that they heap upon another. They like the rush they feel that they have taken advantage of someone in need.
We often trumpet the fact that we are pro-life. We proclaim that all life is sacred, from conception to natural death. We do many things to protect the unborn and to help those at the other end of the spectrum, the terminally ill, to be provided the dignity they deserve. However, there is a huge lacunae in the middle who are alive and mistreated and we do nothing to stand up for them. If all life is sacred, if all life matters, if all life is special, so is theirs.
Let us do what we can to meet the needs of the poor and the needy, the oppressed and the downtrodden. For the Lord dwells in them all.
FAITH ACTION: Pray for those who are brutalized because of their low station in life, that they receive the protection and help that they need.