Solidarity news and reflections of interest to the Passionist Family Images came to mind of people running through clouds of dust after the water trucks with buckets in their hands hoping to catch water that might spill when the trucks went up hills. Last Sunday, while I was celebrating Mass, the words of this psalm struck me calling my attention: “He raises the needy from the dust, lifts the poor from the ash heap”. (Psalm 113:8) At that moment, the images of people in the dusty and polluted roads of Port-au- Prince came to mind. While I recalled my own experiences there - the irritation of my eyes and throat, the dirt leaving a pattern around my sunglasses after riding on a motorbike through the streets - it paled in comparison to the images that came to mind of daily life among the citizens of that city. I recalled people walking with handkerchiefs and dust masks covering their mouths, parents carrying their children under the burning sun to the hospital in search for care, children walking to school barefoot, or in tattered sandals, or with their black dress shoes in a plastic bag to keep them shiny and clean, and of the shoe shiners located near schools and public places ready to remove the ever present dust for a few Gourdes. I could see the people sitting on the edge of the road with their colorful baskets of fruits and vegetables carefully and artistically displayed. Yet, by the end of the day, the baskets and the vendors were similarly covered in a layer of dust kicked up by the traffic and passing trucks. • Images came to mind of people running through clouds of dust after the water trucks with buckets in their hands hoping to catch water that might spill when the trucks went up hills. • I recalled clouds of dust raised by the UN vehicles with their machine guns as they drove by. • Images came to mind of the dust raised by the children playing soccer. The ever-present dust has many causes - the scarcity of rain, deforestation, unplanned urbanization, unpaved roads or roads under construction that never seem to be finished, and paved roads that return to dust after a few weeks because of the scarcity and poor quality of the asphalt used. Those dusty images were then replaced by memories of additional burdens I’ve witnessed - canals full of waste, dunghills where children play, people searching for something to eat or recycle to make money, at times contending with pigs, goats and cows who are also searching for food. The dust in the air provoked by so much aridity and corruption is a symptom of the culture of dust and waste that is obscuring the conscience of our world, turning human beings into waste. I am brought to tears when I think of the joy of those who, through YOUR HELP, manage to have a job, a small house, go to school, have access to medical care, have something to eat and drink, have something to wear, etc. ... There is a small part of humanity that lives like the old glutton of the Gospel (cf. Lk 16:19-31), their conscience asleep and cynical, that does not want to see the many Lazaruses that are covered with sores and eating dust and waste with dogs licking their wounds! Is not the phobia towards refugees due in part to our forgetting that we are all dust and to dust we all return? If it were not for that 'breath' and divine life in us what would we be? We are all dust without the grace that God has poured out abundantly upon us so. Despite our sins, He himself became dust into our dunghills to save us and make us partakers of his own divinity, making us sons, brothers, heirs and co-heirs! The rich and greedy want to build walls to avoid seeing the poor, to avoid seeing the disasters created by their greediness, and to avoid the dust and waste accumulated beyond the walls to keep their own places clean and nice. Their walls are also meant to keep the poor from knocking on their doors, and to block out the sounds of their cries for help. As disciples of Jesus, the Saint Luke Foundation for Haiti wishes to break those walls, walk through barriers, and open new roads. The objective – the moral, righteous, humane, even Godly objective - is to reach out to the marginalized and poor and work with God to continue to raise up the needy from the dust and the poor from the ash heap, and NOT to build walls of separation. We live in such an anesthetized world where we want to avoid any kind of direct approach with those who suffer, to the point that we are unable even to feel their afflictions. The presence of a child begging on our roads bothers us, meeting a terminal patient disturbs us, seeing a crippled or blind person begging on the side of a dusty road shocks us, seeing how many young kids are in jail traumatizes us, and seeing a mother arriving at a hospital exhausted and full of dust carrying her child half dead devastates us. It is easier to build a wall to block out the images – as they say, “out of sight, out of mind” – and to keep the suffering and misery as far away as possible. After all, it is someone else’s problem, someone else’s burden. Yet if one considers the human and financial cost of building, maintaining, and guarding such a wall, we could expend all those energies towards ensuring that we could all sit together at the same table as brothers and sisters, washing the dust away from one another’s feet, and lifting each other up from the ash heap. Your prayers and support can allow us to continue to assure healthcare and education to the poor, to produce food and give job opportunities, to build houses and communities, to spread the good news and build bridges of peace and justice, to distribute water in the slums and use renewable energy, to give the disabled a chance to to live a dignified life as we all deserve. Your support ensures that we can continue to do God's work in Haiti to raise the needy from the dust, and lift the poor from the ash heap. Image: https://www.maxpixel.net/
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