Helping the Helpless

Getting to the heart of Christian charity and love

8/28/2022

Lk 14:1, 7-14 On a sabbath Jesus went to dine at the home of one of the leading Pharisees, and the people there were observing him carefully. He told a parable to those who had been invited, noticing how they were choosing the places of honor at the table. "When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not recline at table in the place of honor. A more distinguished guest than you may have been invited by him, and the host who invited both of you may approach you and say, 'Give your place to this man,' and then you would proceed with embarrassment to take the lowest place. Rather, when you are invited, go and take the lowest place so that when the host comes to you he may say, 'My friend, move up to a higher position.' Then you will enjoy the esteem of your companions at the table. For every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted." Then he said to the host who invited him, "When you hold a lunch or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or your wealthy neighbors, in case they may invite you back and you have repayment. Rather, when you hold a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind; blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous."

We have a tradition in my home country of India that most Americans have never heard of. It is called the 40 days Mass. After someone in the family dies, we have a Mass offered at our home. The priest comes and celebrates Mass, maybe in the living room. Then we have a dinner. Now, the curious thing about the dinner is we do not invite all our family and friends. Rather, we invite the poor people who live in our neighborhood. And there are plenty of poor people in India! Why do we say that Mass and serve that meal?

Well, there are two reasons. First, we celebrate the Mass for our deceased loved one. We know that Jesus ascended into heaven 40 days after his death according to Acts 1. So, too, we pray the soul of our beloved dead might have finished his or her purgatory time and also go to heaven. Time is sort of “elastic” in purgatory, like it says in 2 Pt 3:8, “One day is like a thousand years.” And secondly, we serve the meal for the poor as an act of mercy (a corporal work of mercy) for the poor on behalf of the deceased person. But notice how in both instances, we are helping the helpless. The poor soul in purgatory cannot help himself, and the poor people in India cannot help themselves. And that is the heart of Christian charity and love: helping the helpless.

In the gospel today, Jesus tells a parable about helping the helpless, too, and is sounds a lot like our Indian tradition of the 40 days. Jesus teaches: “When you hold a banquet, invite the crippled, the lame, the blind; blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” Did you catch how Jesus tied together the corporal work of mercy – feeding the poor – with the resurrection of the dead? That is exactly what we do in India. When we say Mass and serve a meal for the poor, we hope to be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous. Why? Because we are helping the helpless.

May I give you three examples of helping the helpless you can use in your own life, so you can also be repaid at the resurrection? First, did you see the Arkansas Catholic newspaper article last week with the story of how I became a school bus driver? I have been promoting the Catholic high school in Northwest Arkansas called Ozark Catholic Academy. One way we help students from Fort Smith choose OCA is providing daily transportation. We have 15 volunteer drivers and I am one of them. My shift is on Fridays. Why do we do this?

Because when you do “a solid” (that’s a favor) for a young person, he or she cannot repay you. In fact, your only repayment will probably be their moans and groans about how hard Catholic school is! When I get an earful of their complaints rather than their compliments, I smile and think: “Bingo! This is what Jesus meant when he said: ‘For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous’.” When we do something for children, we are helping the helpless.

The second example is about our church cat at I.C. in Fort Smith called “Callie”. She was a stray Calico cat that the parishioners all adopted, especially Ed Winklemann. Ed is like a walking St. Francis who loves all God’s creatures. Well, recently, Callie contracted cancer and died. Now, we did not offer any Masses for the repose of her soul, but we do miss her. When we take care of pets, and all God’s creation, we are also helping the helpless. Taking care of this world is also part and parcel of Christian charity and love.

And third, and perhaps the most obvious example of helping the helpless is our care and protection of the unborn. There is no one as helpless as an unborn baby, because he or she would immediately die outside the womb. Unborn babies are entirely dependent on their mothers for food, protection, and love. That is why the recent Supreme Court decision to make abortion illegal on a national level was so important. In my opinion that was an act of Christian charity and love: helping the helpless.

But we also need to apply this principle to those on death row. A friend of mine from seminary is now the bishop of Tulsa, Bishop David Konderla. He wrote recently: “There is no need to use the death penalty in a country with a modern penal system as we have in the U.S. Use of the death penalty coarsens our society and weakens our understanding of the dignity of every human life.” Now here’s the important part of what he said: “In Oklahoma, we have ended the killing of the unborn. I pray we will choose to stop using capital punishment in favor of life without parole for heinous cases.” In other words, when we have mercy on the men and women on death row, we are helping the helpless.

By the way, have you ever noticed this is exactly how God treats us as well? No matter how strong or smart or self-sufficient we think we are, the fact is we are really helpless without God’s grace. We cannot lift our pinky finger without God’s help. When God’s look at us, me and you, we appear to him like the poor people in India, like small children who go to school, like unborn babies in the womb, maybe we even look like Callie the cat, and we most definitely look like inmates on death row. But God does not hesitate to reach down from heaven and help the helpless. Why? Because that is the heart of Christian charity and love, which is the heart of Jesus.

Praised be Jesus Christ!