The Miracle of Compassion

While I was living in a Franciscan Community in Arkansas, USA, I recall watching a video one evening about a Parish Youth Group that decided to share Christmas Dinner with the poorest of the poor. The people lived and worked in a rubbish dump across the boarder in Mexico. The members of the Youth Group discussed how many people might turn up and much food they needed to take. In the end they decided that food for 150 people should be enough.

When they arrived at the rubbish dump they put up the portable tables they had brought and started started carving a large ham. This they offered together with other food they had brought with them. As the day turned to evening and the growing crowd of people had been fed, they discovered they still had enough food left to hand out for people to take home.

It was only at the end of the evening, as the members of the Youth Group were sitting around discussing the day, that they realized while they had brought enough food for only 150 people, over 300 people had been fed, and that there was still plenty of food left over to take to two orphanages!

However, the story didn't stop there. Among the helpers was a middle-aged U.S. postal worker named Frank Alarcon. He was so inspired by the need and poverty of those who had attended the Christmas meal, he decided when he retired he would offer his time to work at the community centre that had been set up at the dump – and in due course Frank became its director until his death in 2011.

While I found this story inspirational, it raised for me the question – 'Which was the real miracle?' Was it the feeding of the crowd on that Christmas Day in 1972? Or was it the transformation that happened Frank Alarcon's life? A transformation which inspired him to offer his time and energy and to work tirelessly and ultimately he ended up helping thousands of people?

We see a similar event to this miracle story in the Gospel reading set for next Sunday (21^st July - Mark 6:30-34, 53-56). In the edited text we hear how Jesus was moved by compassion for the needs of a crowd of people who gathered around him with their sick – begging him to heal them. At its heart this story also involves the miracle of compassionate generosity.

Jesus was aware that his disciples needed time out – however, when he saw the needs of the local people who crowded him, all clambering for him, Jesus stops and attends to their needs. However, the real miracle was not so much about the healing he offered but the transformation of people's lives that flowed from that healing. And that healing also included a group of overwhelmed and ungenerous disciples with “hardened hearts” – and this is where I find this Gospel story challenges me also. Jesus still needs us – including me – to be his hands and feet in our world, and if we respond to his invitation, it will quietly involve us to show the compassion and care of God to those we meet who are in need – and that might sound like a big commitment!

In the opening story, the Youth Group wanted to do something for the people who lived and worked at Rubbish Dump. By their generosity they sparked a change not only in the lives of the poor but also in their lives as well as in the life of a Postal Worker who offered the rest of his life to help those people and in doing so inspired others to join him.

If we were to visit that place today, we will find there is a small medical clinic built on the site of the Christmas party and attended by a doctor who comes four times a week. Next to the doctor's clinic is a pharmacy and a dental centre, where a dentist volunteers her services three days a week; and a day-care centre as well. And because they are working with people who have very little financial resources, if they can’t pay they are still treated and receive the medication and help and support they need.

At it's heart, this is a story about the miracle of compassionate generosity. Christ was there on that Christmas day – and transformation happened – and has continued to happen.

Christ is here with us – where we may find our rest – and with whom our hungry soul can be fed – as we become Christ's hands and feet to each other.

Kia mau te rongo me te pai ki a koe i to haerenga

May you find peace and goodwill on your journey.

Phil