Knock 2008 – Sr Stans Talk on Suffering
Knock ~ August 2008
 Suffering
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“It was necessary that Christ should sufferâ€Â. Why was it necessary that he should undergo such a brutal death.
 The necessity was a consequence of the total love Jesus entering into solidarity with all who suffer in any way. He suffered brutal, physical violence and the injustice of a sham trial. He felt the sadness of leaving his mother and the disappointed and betrayal and desertion by chosen friends. The most painful was the darkness of alienation from God which is the ultimate pain of sin.ÂÂ
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Jesus did not remove suffering from the world but he entered into all forms of suffering so that all who suffered might be strengthened by his presence. Having loved those who were his own in the world, he loved them to the end.
 Today I want to talk to you about the suffering of the poor and disadvantaged people of the world and what they can teach us.
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 In 1983 when I started my work in the area of homelessness I began with a study on the nature and extent of homelessness amongst women in Dublin and I spent the following year with eight young women between the ages of 15 and 25 who had been homeless.
 We spent the year trying to understand each other. They described what it was like:-
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To have no place to go,
To have no address,
To have no place to leave your things,
To have no place to wash,
No place to change your clothes,
No door to lock behind you.
 What it was like to have a home, but not being able to go there. And they described the awfulness of this life.
But they described even in greater detail what it was like and how much more difficult it was for them to be treated badly, to be treated without respect and they described how peoples faces would change when they told them they were homeless.
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They described how there whole sense of themselves, their self esteem, their self respect, their dignity, their pride was eroded on a daily basis; by the way people treated them.ÂÂ
They could count on one hand or maybe on one finger the number of people who treated them with respect.
 This was more important to them than anything else. They did need money, they did need clothes, they needed food, they needed many things, but above all, they needed to know they were respected all of us. In the deepest part of our being we all know a hidden beauty, a hidden dignity, and when that is not recognised or respected by the other, it is soul destroying. Deep in them these women knew they have the right to respect.
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The poor have a lot to teach us about respect and their right to respect. Respect is about acceptance. It is about not judging. It is about listening. It is about waiting. It is about empowering.  Respect is about letting the other know that they are important.
 Respect is about letting people know that no person is unimportant. That serving the poor is always important. It is not something we can take lightly. It is something that commands our full attention and our full respect.ÂÂ
When we respect the poor we provide services or a high standard of good quality and in doing so making a statement to society and to everyone that the poor have a right to respect and dignity why? Because they are God’s nobility. So we don’t give worn clothes to worn people or broken cups to broken people or a shabby poor service to people who feel shabby about themselves. And the reason we do that is because we believe that in serving the poor, we are serving Christ.ÂÂ
Since 1983 Focus Ireland has grown into a big organisation dealing with thousands of homeless people each year but its values and principles are still the same. The values of
- Respect
- Dignity
- Hospitality
- Empowerment
- Compassion
- Love
- Friendship
 Right through his public life, Jesus shows us how much he was drawn to the poor and the powerless and his great respect for them. He tells us that in the gospel today we can find Him in the persons of the poor: “I was hungry and you gave me to eat, thirsty and you gave me to drink. I was a stranger and you took me in.â€Â
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There is beauty in all of us,
In all of creation,
And there is a beauty deeply hidden in the broken bodies of the poor and the suffering.
This hidden beauty is of God.
It is Jesus himself who is hidden in the poor.
He tells us so himself:
“Whosoever welcomes one of these little ones in
My name,
Welcomes Me,
And whosoever welcomes Me
Welcomes the One who sent meâ€Â
 In one way it is easy to help the poor
-        marginalized people, disabled people,
homeless people, elderly people, people with special needs.
It’s easy to give money to them, for example,
Or to organizations that work with them.
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What is not so easy is:
To walk with the poor is
To open our hearts to them
To acknowledge that no matter how poor a person may be,
They carry the great beauty of God in them
And to allow them to reveal that beauty to us.
 During his public life, Jesus identified with the poor
when the disciples of John came to ask Jesus who he was
Jesus said “Go tell John what you see,
The blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk
And the poor have the good news preached to them.â€Â
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Jesus gave us a great lesson in walking with the poor
In his story of the Good Samaritan.
In this story, Jesus looks at human life from the gutter.
It is through the eyes of the victim
That we see the Priest and the Levite pass by
And the Samaritan take time to stop and care.
The Samaritan did not only take care of the man who had been hurt. He promised him that he would come back next day
To see how he was. He wasn’t just giving him a handout,
He made a commitment to him.
 Why did the Priest and the Levite pass him by?
And why did the Good Samaritan stop?
Maybe it was because they asked different questions.
The priest and Levite might have asked,
“What would happen to me if I stop and become involved with this man?â€Â
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“What would happen to my life, to my family,
To my reputation, to my plans, to my day, to my time, to my career
 If I become involved?
I could be beaten up, I could be robbed.â€Â
The question the Samaritan, on the other hand, asked was
Something more like this: “what will happen to him if I don’t stop?
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It is only if we ask the right question,
That we can get the right answer.
 We too have the same fear.
We too  are afraid of being disturbed by the poor,
We too are afraid of allowing the poor to reveal Christ to us..
And so we are afraid to walk with the poor.
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The relationships into which the poor call us
Is not sentimentality;
Rather it is a call to deep trust,
A mutual recognition of each other,
They touch into our brokenness,
As we touch into theirs,
And when that happens,
We are transformed.
 If we are changed by the poor,
If they touch into our brokenness and poverty,
We are changed forever,
There is no turning back,
And when this happens to you,
You know it,
Because it is a life-changing experience.
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In that transformation, we find new strength,
The strength of tenderness and goodness and patience and forgiveness.
 This is what I mean when I talk about “finding God in the poor.â€Â
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When we choose to walk with the poor,
They can disturb us,
Through their cry for understanding, friendship and trust. They reveal to us our hardness, our selfishness, our resistance to change. They reveal to us how imprisoned we are in our own fears.
From the poor,
We learn not to be surprised if we are rejected by broken people.
 They have suffered a great deal at the hands of the knowledgeable
And the powerful.
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They have suffered so much from broken promises
From people wanting to learn from experiments,
Or people who write about them and then,
Having gained what they wanted,
Who go away and never come back.
 Rejected people are sick and tired of good and generous people,
Who claim to be Christians
Or who reach down to them from their pedestals
To do them good.
It is no wonder
Their hearts are closed to new people.
They are waiting for someone who really cares and loves them,
Wanting someone who sees in them the light of love and wisdom,
Wanting someone who recognises their gifts and their beauty.
Wanting someone who will accept them just as they are,
With no pre-conceived ideas about how they should change.
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They are waiting for someone
Who is willing to know the pain
Of becoming vulnerable enough to love.
Someone who will meet them where they are.
 When Jesus met the Woman at the Well
He did not speak from a pedestal,
But out of his own need,
His cry of thirst:
‘Give me to drink’.
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This was a most rejected woman.
She had lived with five men
And the man she was then living with was not her husband.
 She was utterly broken,
Her self-image shattered,
Ridden with guilt,
Rejected by her own people
Who were them selves rejected.
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Jesus looked at this woman whom others despised as a prostitute and he said,
“You can do something for me,
I need your help.â€Â
 Jesus knew to reach out in compassion to poor and rejected is not to give of our riches,
But to reveal to them their riches,
Their gifts, and their value
And to trust them and their capacity to grow.
Jesus told the Samaritan woman that if she drank the waters he would give her, the water from the well of his being.
Then this water would become in her a spring welling up into eternal life.
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She would then give life to others,
Becoming a source of life,
Quenching the thirst of others.
This is astonishing.
This most rejected of women
Was the first person to whom he revealed his divinity
And she went off to the villages to reveal the good news.
 The lesson for us today is that we need to ask ourselves,
What rejected person is waiting for me to reveal to them the real beauty and gift of their lives
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When Jesus was speaking with the Samaritan woman
He was not just speaking to the poor of the world
But he was speaking to the poor in each of us,
That broken part of our being where there is so much fear,
Where we have no confidence in our ability to love and be loved.
 Today as yesterday,
Jesus is calling us to follow him,
To walk in his footsteps.
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As Christians and followers of Christ,
We are called to announce,
To make known the presence of God through our lives,
In our world and in our time
 We are called to be the presence of God.
Today Christ needs us to be His presence in the world.
He has no hands, no words, no heart, no love, except ours.
 He is calling us to be like him,
Wherever we find ourselves.
To live as he lived,
To love as he loved,
To speak as he spoke,
To offer our lives as he offered his,
To do what he did,
To do even greater things,
Because of his life.
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