Supplements

Commentary

By Liz Quirin

Belonging to the Body of Christ

It’s 2009. Can we tell any difference between 2008 and this year yet? We all hope the beginning of this year will be better than the last few months of 2008 when many people lost their jobs, most of us lost some of our savings or retirement accounts, and many of our Latino brothers and sisters returned to their countries. Why should we care about that?

Their absence tells us in no uncertain terms that our economy has slipped to the point where our country no longer holds out the opportunity for a better life for those in less fortunate circumstances. Although many of us are scrambling to make ends meet, their “ends” are much farther apart than ours.

The number of returning citizens to Mexico and Central America has begun to put additional strain on economies that could not support the many hungry people who stayed “home” when others went north to find a way to support their families, even risking their lives to come here. Even the threat of being jailed and/or deported because they came here without documents couldn’t stop them, but our economy did.

One of the richest, and for some unscrupulous people, the greediest countries in the world, can’t support its consumptive lifestyle. Have we learned any lessons here? I hope so, but one lesson we already know and need to keep repeating over and over has to do with sharing our wealth, even if that wealth has been reduced. If we don’t take care of those less fortunate, whether they live inside our borders or outside them, we will live to regret it. We must take care of our own families, but we belong to a much larger family — the Body of Christ, and we need to believe that more firmly today than ever.

When one part of the Body bleeds, we need to staunch the bleeding, care for the wound and lift up those who hurt and who hunger. In that way, we take care not only of the troubled but ourselves. In the coming days of this new year, we need to look more closely at our ability to reach out to those in need. At the end of 2008, so many people gave gifts to the poor, food to the hungry and helped shelter the homeless.

We must make sure we don’t forget that the need to eat, the need to drink clean water and the need to find shelter continues every day in this country and others around the world. We tend to give at the end of the year, some for tax purposes and others because this is the season to share blessings with the less fortunate. While our gifts may give us some sense of satisfaction, we can augment our giving by looking for ways to volunteer our time and our talents through our parishes or diocesan outreach agencies. They can always use a hand if we just call on them. If we start with our parishes, we can begin this new year by continuing to strengthen ourselves and the Body of Christ to which we belong.