“If a man with gold rings and fine clothes comes into your assembly, and a poor person in shabby clothes also comes in, and you pay attention to the one wearing the fine clothes and say, ‘Sit here please,’ while you say to the poor one, ‘Stand there,’ or ‘Sit ay my feet,’ have you not made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil designs?”
Letter of St. James

A “powerless” older woman prowled through a grocery store café looking for an electrical outlet to charge her hearing aids on a Sunday morning since the public library that she had been using would be closed. Victory! The booths were equipped with public access outlets and the café opened at 6:30 a.m.

The “powerless” woman headed home to an inside temperature of 97 degrees four days after a storm had knocked out electricity for me and 200,000 other people. All I could think about was where to get electricity and how to cope with another dark, hot evening – the daily predicament of the homeless and poor people whose power has been shut off. These are the people St. James tells us to welcome to our communities in today’s reading.

Of course, my plight had little in common with theirs other than the lack of electricity. No one tried to pretend I didn’t exist or blamed me for my predicament. When I asked if I could use an outlet at the library, a smiling librarian pointed to the power strips she had set up after the storm. Friends and family invited me to stay with them. I drank iced tea with my close friend while charging my phone at her house and watched the Olympics with my cousin.  I was like the person who was told “sit here please” rather than those told to “stand there.”

Despite all the kindness, the remembrance of having felt like a high-class bag lady for a couple of days lingers. As I was obsessively concentrating on finding places with power, I realized how we so often turn a blind eye to the homeless.

Ironically, the day before the storm I had helped with a Habitat for Humanity program at a homeless shelter. Due to its location, middle class people will never encounter its residents, let alone talk to them. I felt guilty for doing so little to help them.

St. James reminds us today that we need to “pay attention” to people like those at the shelter even if they make us uncomfortable.  Bravo to readers who regularly assist people on the margins.   You are role models for the rest of us.

As a final note, I can’t resist sharing a story about welcoming homeless people to our churches.  Driving home from Mass one Saturday my dear friend said she was so happy that a homeless person had distributed communion. I hated having to disillusion her. The EME was a noted painter who had come to St. John’s from working in his studio, dressed accordingly.  Jane’s heart was in the right place even if this “homeless” man could have bought and sold both of us.