p. 51The Sacred Heart and Ministering to the Afflicted

The compassion of the Sacred Heart for sorrow and misery of every kind found continual expression in active good works. As our Lord went about, preaching and teaching the people, He was forever healing the sick, comforting the afflicted, counseling the doubtful, forgiving the sinner, ministering to every form of human misery. He preaches to us by an example more powerful than words, teaching us that in the ordinary occupations of our everyday life we are coming constantly in contact with the very persons whom He wishes us to help and to comfort. Just as our Lord healed those who came His way, so ought we to pity and help the actual, living persons with whom Providence brings us in contact. There is no use in having a vague and general compassion for the afflicted. The great point is to do the deed of mercy when it comes our way and to seize the momentary opportunity to comfort the sorrowful, help the poor, visit the sick, welcome the stranger, and so of all the other acts of spiritual and corporal mercy.

Our Lord has told us, “The poor you have always with you,” and He has encouraged us to look on every person whom we meet as another Christ, assuring us that whatever we do to the least of these His brethren, He takes as done to Himself. The circumstances of society have greatly changed since His time. The methods of relief are different. Grinding poverty is in many places less frequent, and sickness also less terrible than in His day. But the miseries of mankind still persist. They are rooted in human nature itself and will endure to the end of time.

In simpler days of old, the Catholic family, desirous of imitating the compassion of the Sacred Heart, found many easy ways of helping the poor and comforting the afflicted. People lived in neighborhoods in those days and were well known to one another. The sometimes complex organization which now is necessary in order to reach and relieve the afflicted was unthought of then. All that was required in those days was to give alms to the beggar, send food to the hungry, or clothes to those whose poverty exposed them to the pangs of cold. But nowadays, our social organization has grown so complex that the Catholic family, devoted to the Sacred Heart and desiring to imitate the ministrations of Christ to the poor, can hardly practice charity as simply as was possible in former days. Yet, we may be quite sure that the Sacred Heart desires as earnestly of the Catholic families of this day as of the families of simpler times that they should minister to the poor. How, then, can we fulfill this loving desire?

The answer is a very easy one. Where it is possible to minister directly and personally to the needs of others or their distresses, our Lord undoubtedly wishes us to exercise this personal ministry. When friends are ill, some one of the family ought to go and visit them. When a case of need or destitution becomes known in the neighborhood, the members of the family should make some effort to help relieve this neighborhood affliction. How many kind and friendly offices there are that the people of the neighborhood can exercise toward one another. Whether it be reading to some blind person, or visiting a shut-in, or taking care of somebody’s children during a family crisis of sickness or accident, or teaching some children their catechism, or making some lonely person feel at home in the neighborhood, there are a whole series of neighborhood opportunities which almost every family could find near at hand for practicing the charity befitting followers and imitators of the Sacred Heart.

Then there is the whole wide field of Catholic friendliness and sociability, the hallowed task of helping Catholic young folk who come as strangers to the parish to make Catholic acquaintances and to form safe friendships which may lead to Catholic marriages. The preciousness of such charity and its dearness to the Sacred Heart is very great in our time, because so many Catholic young people who wander across the face of the land fall into ways of infidelity and neglect for want of Catholic sociability.

Then, there are the children, the neglected Catholic children, deprived of the heritage of their faith because they have not received instruction. Out of our four million Catholic children of school age about two million are safe in the parish schools. The other half, or nearly half, are deprived of this immense blessing and, sad to say, the very ones whose parents do not take interest enough to send them to the parish school are the ones who receive least instruction at home.

Dear to the Sacred Heart must be the work of individual zeal on the part of members of the family in looking up and instructing neglected Catholic children. The difficulty sometimes exists, of course, that city life is so individualistic, that neighborhoods are no longer neighborhoods, and people who live next door are strangers to each other. It may be, indeed, that some very charitable people find themselves unable to practice individual good works in imitation of the Sacred Heart. But for these also Providence has opened a way in Catholic organizations. We must defer to another chapter some thoughts on this great opportunity offered to those families whose members desire to imitate the charity of the Heart of Christ in their active good works for their neighbor.