"Prayer of the pilgrim"

”Prayer of the pilgrim”. As if you were walking. You can take a walk in a peaceful place. “I will take her to the dessert and I will speak to her heart” (Hosea 14). Saint Dominic whilst he was walking along the roadways “Talked to God and talked with God”. It may be prayed of praise, of thanks giving, of pleading, the important thing is: to be in a peaceful place, trying to draw near to the fountainhead: “I have water that leaps to eternal life”.

Topic: practical charity

Today we are going to follow the Holy Fathers of the Church, to meditate upon their ideas that will help us to connect with God and with our brothers.

SAINT JERONIMO: Was aware that the Church had GROWN due to the persecutions, but with the emperors it acquired riches, but dwindles in virtue. Saint Basil (year 330) denounces the evil of usury: “It exploits misery, makes money with tears, strangles those who are without clothes and squashes those who are hungry”. In the year 368 he organized a soup kitchen for the poor, in which all could participate, even the pagans and foreigners. “To have more than the necessary is to deprive the poor, is to rob them”. It is a denouncement of those that boast about having a lot or being over others. “The bread that you have belongs to the hungry ones: and the cloak that you keep put away belongs to the naked...”

It seems to me that this is still currently valid…

Saint John Crisotome (year 350): Never pact with the scandal of riches.

Have eyes to SEE reality; JUDGE that reality in the light of the Gospel and ACT: “As I came through the streets I saw people lying mutilated…. I have to speak about it”, he said, and it was well said.

It hurt him that “many people don’t have work”: source of living and realization of a right. Communion rejects the ACUMULATION of goods. Riches accumulated are the fruit of egoism, selfishness. It is a negation of COMMUNIO. “Not giving what you have is a sort of robbery”.

For Saint John Crisotome the essence of Christianism is to give food to the hungry, to do what is good. “Not to have a stone heart – When we are lacking in mercy we are not feeling the essential of humanity..

Saint Ambrose (370) Father of the Fathers.

He denounced injustice: he described the components of the just society. He urged the communion of goods:

1.- Why is the poor man always looked down upon, scorned? The poor wash the gold and then they are denied it. “They become tired looking for it and never possess it”. This is what we have lived with the gold-washers in the Amazon in this XXI century that we are living in. Exactly the same as St. Ambrose is talking about, with some details of inhumanity that perhaps even Saint Ambrose didn’t know about; that a poor man who is washing gold become ill and he “gets thrown overboard”, they throw him into the river to get rid of him and not have the expense of the hospital… Every day the poor get killed.

2.- Components of the capitalist society:
Above all to seek the maximum profit with the minimum cost. Ambition, avarice… We should remember the parable of the poor man Lazarus: he was denied the crumbs that fell from the table where they ate splendidly.
Saint Ambrose denounced the very Church: If it had gold, then give it to the poor. “The ornate of the sacraments is the ornate of the captives”.

3.- The Communion of goods exists in Nature: “Nature caused common rights and USURPATION gave rise to private right (privatization)”. “Don’t give to the poor man what is yours, rather give back to him what is his”. “The earth belongs to all, not only to the rich”.

To follow the idea of the Didaché (catechism of the early Christians) “If we communicate spiritual goods –how much more should we communicate material goods?”

Saint Augustine was very clear about this, that peace cannot exist without justice. Without justice and compassion Christian life is meaningless.

Conclusion: This is all valid for today. Think about it and try to live it in the midst of my possibilities. I have part of the responsibility, many mall, but how good it is to live in this spirit. It is the Spirit of Jesus. I should finish with gratitude.