Here May All Find Welcome

Dear Friend,

This week Roger Bergman concludes his bulletin article on Catholic social teaching by highlighting the Mission church’s soon to be completed mobility access ramp. He outlines papal teaching on the “inseparable bond between our faith and the poor” and writes that, in line with that teaching, those “who are ‘poor in mobility” will soon be able to enter the church with greater dignity.  

I’m always grateful for Roger’s efforts (over seven years now!) - his insight, time, and energy - dedicated to helping all of us think through important issues by drawing on his dedicated scholarship in the Catholic tradition. But this week I’m especially grateful for the way Roger helps me read the scriptures we’ll hear proclaimed this weekend at Mass. 

“God chose the foolish of the world,” writes Saint Paul, “…the weak… lowly and despised of the world.” He is describing the makeup of those first Christian communities, as well as the audience of those hearing Jesus’s Beatitudes for the first time. In a world marked by violence, enforcement, aggression, and division, Jesus (and Paul after him) directly addressed the ones the prophets of old had always called “the humble of the earth…a people humble and lowly.” Here were the ones “in Christ” as Paul says, whose “wisdom” flows from the most shocking sign of public humiliation: the cross.

I hope the Mission church - founded (ironically) on the outskirts of an empire on the verge of collapse - will always be a place of refuge for those weighed down by so many forms of poverty: those who grieve and those wounded by physical or psychological distress; pilgrims walking with open hearts and the bare minimum; those who’ve backed themselves into corners, or have been pushed there by others. Here may all find welcome and, in Christ, “righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.”  

Gratefully,

Father Dan