THE WISDOM OF FR. HORACE McKENNA, S.J.

(The following sayings and pictures can be found in Christ is with the Poor: Stories and Sayings of Horace McKenna, S.J., edited by John Dear, S.J and Joe Hines, c. 1989 by The Father McKenna Center and the Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus.

It is available through the Father McKenna Center.)

“A Night in the Public Shelter”, by Fr. McKenna

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If the church does not care for the poor they will be neglected. That is the test of our faithfulness to Christ: how we relate to the poor.

I really believe that every person is a revelation of God – the joy of God, the love of God. I feel that the human person on the street is the appearance of Jesus Christ consumed with human needs. Christ is tin the wretched person, as well as the young person, the young woman or the young child. Their smile is so fresh, like a bud or an open flower that speaks of the plant beneath the surface. And that wealth is God.

The poor are here, I believe to teach us our lesson that we must live modestly. Their pains are God’s invitation for us to share. Ill-gotten wealth and ill-used surplus really belong to those in need. In the poor, God speaks shrilly in our minds, but lovingly to our hearts.

Our Lord did his miracles instantaneously at a word but his church, his brothers,

his sisters, his fathers and mothers have to do their miracles slowly.

We should always strive not to hurt or kill anyone.

Our motto should be the spiritual song,

“We ain’t gonna study war no more.”

There is a vital strength in the poor. Its basis is their realization that they are children of God and that God is their mother, their father. They have an inheritance like everybody else. That’s the basis of their dignity. You can’t beat that out of them, or scare it out of them or shame it out of them.

You can’t talk to a person about his or her soul if that person has no food.

If we see our brothers and sisters as God’s children, we will want to help them and bring them their share of God’s goodness.

The Church without social work is like Christ without miracles.

I do not see God in God’s present creatures. I see God in God’s absence. I see the need for God, the want for God, the thirst for God, in the hungry, the shabby, the cold, the outcast. These people are not meant to live in that want. They are meant to be cared for, provided for and loved. Only God can awaken this care and sustain this law and reward this attention. And the human misery present is a cry and a plea to God, and a scream to all people to fulfill their human role and distribute to the needy their inheritance and so witness to the love of Christ for the beggar Lazarus, and for Jairus’ daughter and the penniless widow.

In the old days, we would go out in pairs and take care of the widow Jones who had no bread or the Widow Smith whose rent was due. But now, the poor are a swarm all around us. We can’t go out to them. How could you go to sixty homes? How could you go everywhere at once? We have to be ready when they come to us.

The greatest undeveloped resource of our nation and of our world is the poor.

The ‘love gifts’ that you distribute to the poor and needy are a proof to them that they are children of God and that you, who are their benefactors, are disciples of Jesus.

It’s so bad to see many people in need of a meal. Wouldn’t you think that they’d have homes and facilities and a loving family and plenty of food in the closet. And yet they haven’t. They have to come out and get a hot meal that’s offered to them by some sensitive church.

I think we need to have marches – hunger marches, marches for the homeless, marches for peace.

We need to make the government realize it should not spend our food money on armaments for war.

The poor can’t lift themselves up by their own bootstraps because they have no boots.

In my dreams of the Last Day, Our Lord will come back and reward us for having, by his grace, straightened the world out, and having the poor competent, and the rich thoughtful, and the well-protected kindly and generous and involved, and the spiritual able to perceive God in such a way as to make God visible to us.

My greatest cause for thanksgiving is that I am involved with God’s poor…these poor people by whom we are surrounded here in the inner city haunt and attract me. I see their poor clothes, which are hard on their personal dignity. Their food is limited, reducing their strength and powers. And their housing is a scandal, cramming their social joy and growth. These people I love – I want the love of every woman, I want the wisdom, the providence of every man, and I want the confidence of every child. But all that is secondary. The main hunger that I share and the want that aches me is that God is eager, yearning for them. Why not then, the comfortable suburbanites? For them too I feel: their tensions, frustrations, disappointments, shortages of love. But God is eager to get into all these people. As God gives blood to their bodies, God wants their faith and love. God is though, in a way, in the greater need with the poor. So I feel and hope that it is God’s wants that I am satisfying, God’s yearning, God’s ache, God’s desire.

In Jesus, we are so near to God that the Cherubim and Seraphim,

the angels nearest to God, seem like outfielders.

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