Cross Catholic Outreach is actively involved in health care initiatives throughout Haiti. We strive to bring healing to impoverished communities by shipping medical supplies and providing financial support to Catholic ministries that run clinics and provide medical services for the poor.
On my recent visit to Meru, Kenya, I met Father Francis, a diocesan priest who has been called by God to rescue hundreds of orphans and street children. After spending only a few minutes with Fr. Francis, it was easy to see what made him successful. Behind a wide smile and gregarious personality, I discovered a man of incredible faith who trusted in Jesus Christ’s love to heal and redeem even those with the deepest wounds and the most troubled past.
I don’t know which affected me more – the old man sprawled out on a bed of garbage or the lonely baby crying out for comfort. I wanted to weep about both but I was too numb with shock. I had only been in Nairobi’s sprawling Huruma slum for about an hour and I was already anxious to leave.
My recent bout of the stomach flu has made me grateful for some things: A comfortable bed. A toilet inside my home. Clean water when I’m dehydrated. Money for a doctor (and a vehicle to get to the clinic).
When Pope Francis exhorts us to see the face of Jesus in the suffering poor, that doesn’t mean poverty automatically makes a person Christ-like. Even so, those who are lowly in the world’s eyes are often just the sort of people God uses to humble the high and mighty by demonstrating a life rich in faith.
A renowned scholar, Saint Thomas Aquinas (1224-1275) is often referred to as the Third Entry of Aristotle into the world. As a Dominican friar, he basically took much of the philosophical method of Aristotle and “Christianized” it, thus preparing the way for a “Natural Theology” to be based upon deductive reasoning.