SUNDAY, May 3 Easter 4

That is a haunting question. Does it imply that God's love is not in us so long as we know of even one needy person and still hold something back for ourselves rather than give it to him? If so, then God's love abides in virtually no one. Maybe in Dorothy Day; maybe in Mother Teresa--but in hardly anyone else I've ever heard of, and certainly not in me.

"Don't be so hard on yourself," someone will say to me. "You're doing what you can." Well, the truth is that I do some things, but I could do more. I volunteer at a soup kitchen once a week. A couple of times a month, I give a five-dollar bill to the first street person I see upon leaving my downtown office after work in the afternoon. I donate to charities. I pray for the poor in the nation and the world. But that is not "enough"--if "enough" is defined by needs that remain unaddressed.

Perhaps, though, it is not a question of doing "enough," but of doing something, of connecting with other people, and of holding them up in prayer.

The bread you do not use is the bread of the hungry. The garment hanging in your wardrobe is the garment of the person who is naked.

--Basil the Great

PRAY for the Diocese of Rift Valley (Tanzania)

Ps 23; Acts 4:5-12; John 10:11-18

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