Three charities in this parish have asked for money for Holy Week. All three tend to the homeless in the area where I am staying. These three charities only received to date this year, from this wealthy parish, the price of airfare to France from Chicago.
I cannot understand the blindness of the People of God. If I were in charge of formation in seminaries, I would make every seminarian stay three nights in a homeless shelter, or outside with the homeless.
Why are we ignoring those who are the most vulnerable.
Here is Bernard of Clairvaux on how self-love interferes with virtue. We should give when it hurts us to give.
It is said correctly that it was by holy Fathers that this way of life was organized; they
did not abrogate the Rule, they merely moderated its severity on account of the weak, so that
more men might be saved. At the same time, I would hate to think that these holy Fathers would
have commanded or allowed the many foolish excesses I have noticed in several monasteries. I
am astonished that monks could be so lacking in moderation in matters of food and drink, and
with respect to clothing and bedding, carriages and buildings. Things have come to such a pass
that right order and religion are thought to be promoted, the more concern and pleasure and
enthusiasm there is regarding such things. Abstemiousness is accounted miserliness, sobriety
strictness, silence gloom. On the other hand, laxity is labeled discretion, extravagance generosity,
talkativeness sociability, and laughter joy. Fine clothes and costly caparisons are regarded as
mere respectability, and being fussy about bedding is hygiene. When we lavish these things on
one another, we call it love. Such love undermines true love. Such discretion disgraces real
discretion. This sort of kindness is full of cruelty, for it so looks after the body that the soul is
strangled. How can love pamper the flesh and neglect the spirit ? What sort of discretion is it to
give everything to the body and nothing to the soul? Is it kindness to entertain the maid and
murder the mistress? For this kind of mercy let no one hope to receive the mercy the Gospel
promises through the mouth of Truth, to those who show mercy: "Blessed are the merciful, for
they shall receive mercy." Rather, he can expect that penalty called down by holy Job on those
who are cruelly kind. Speaking in prophecy, rather than merely giving vent to his feelings, he
said: "May he go unremembered; let him come to grief like a sterile tree." He then shows how
such a punishment was deserved by adding: "He feeds the barren childless woman, and does no
good to the widow."
EXCERPTS FROM THE APOLOGIA TO ABBOTT WILLIAM OF ST.-THIERRY
