With the poor and with God
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By: Father Shay Cullen
I first went to Calcutta to work among people suffering from Hanson’s Disease (leprosy) and hungry street children that populated the railway stations and back allies. I was a chaplain for a few months to the Missionaries of Charity, a congregation of men founded by Mother Theresa.
We lived a life of simplicity and deprivation. No fans, no soft beds, no tasty meals. A slim mat on a hard concrete floor was our resting place in a large room that doubled as a meeting and prayer room. We awoke before dawn rolled up our mats and washed in small cubicles from a bucket. The day began with Morning Prayer, sitting on the floor in a circle reading and meditating on the scripture. Then we shared the Eucharist.
It is a shocking reality. The human suffering and the pain of being unwanted, outcast and living worse than hungry dogs in a world of inequality, where the rich gave not even the waste and crumbs from their sumptuous banquets to feed the poor
There was a shared spirit of unity, dedication and a vision of purpose which we needed to strengthen our resolve to face whatever human degradation the day would bring. Working in pairs we were set off to the streets to find the sick and the dying and do whatever we could to ease their suffering. We were like insignificant ants on a mountain and I wondered what good can we do to change this affront to human dignity.
I went with the portable clinic, a converted van for the treatment of people with Hanson’s Disease that hid themselves in the vast city’s slaughter houses, where only the untouchables and ourselves dared to venture. The Hanson’s Disease victims were banished and excluded. However, they were happy to see us and stretched out their decaying hands and feet to be cleaned and treated and showed us parts of their decrepit bodies for the medically trained to amputate. My job was to unwind the filthy bandages and wash the putrid wounds. A daunting task at first. They eagerly took their medicine in the vain hope that they would be cured.
It is a shocking. The human suffering and the pain of being unwanted, outcast and living worse than hungry dogs in a world of inequality, where the rich give not even the waste and crumbs from their sumptuous banquets to feed the poor. I asked where was the loving, compassionate, healing God in all of this. No wonder Mother Theresa doubted if there was a God at all. And yet she carried on serving the poor in her spiritual desolation and inner loneliness crying out for a God, whose presence she could not see or feel - that was heroic virtue indeed, truly saintly.
On other days I went to the hospice for the dying, a converted Hindu temple. Here we brought the dying whose skeletal bodies of the poor had been rescued by the sisters from the Missionaries of Charity from gnawing rats on the garbage heaps that piled in the city streets or from the filthy gutters. We treated the dying as the precious children of God. They received respect, reverence and love. Did a loving God allow it to be like this? Could God not intervene with a mighty hand to bring down the mighty from their thrones, lift up the downtrodden and establish a kingdom of justice and peace with food and dignity for all as Jesus wanted?
Down in the railway station where trains pulled in at regular 20 minute intervals, dozens of children, mostly boys, swarmed over the carriages devouring left over food scraps and collecting rags and any bit of junk that could be sold.
There are millions of abandoned street children around the world. They are exploited as child workers, sexually abused and thousands are illegally imprisoned. They are deprived of a childhood and a life of value and, today, in the Philippines, it is still the case, a rich nation with millions of poor. Injustice and greed are the roots of social evil and thrive, because the rich refuse to put aside their greed and build a just society.
Mother Theresa saw the injustice and poverty everyday for over 60 years and yet she never gave up being one with the poor and the abandoned. Although the joy of experiencing God throughout her life was unattainable, God was with the poor through her and through them, God was with her. -End-
