By Manuel Munguia

It was mid-morning in Rome, on June 21, 1963, a radiant day and my first one in Europe. The traffic stopped. With most people on Bus #64, I ran to the Vatican to witness the white smoke that announced the election of Pope John XXIIIﾒs successor, Giovanni Cardinal Montini, Archbishop of Milan. Cardinal Montini, Paul VI, had inherited a task of epic proportions. The regret and the sadness that John XXIIIﾒs death had left behind was only partially counterbalanced by the excitement and the hope that the on-going Vatican Council elicited in those days.

When I entered the Franciscan Order in Assisi later that year, the second session of the Council was underway and we hosted many bishops and cardinals in our monasteries during breaks, which offered me the opportunity to witness, first hand, some of the discussions and struggles that animated the members of the Council. It soon became clear that the role of the Church in the ﾓmodern worldﾔ was one of the most arduous topics of Vatican II and the one that encountered strong resonance and interest in the public at large. For my part, great hope lay ahead realizing that the two realities that seemed often at odds with each otherﾗthe Church that I wanted to serve and the World that I admired for its beauty, its diversity, its history and its technologyﾗwere being brought together by the Council.

I understood then that the members of the religious congregations, with the laypeople and the sacramental ministers (the clergy), are in fact born for and called to build the People of God, the community to which all men and women across history were somehow connected. The People of God was endowed with the mission of bringing the saving power of the Gospel to all, not only across the world in a geographical sense, but also throughout all the social, economic, cultural and political strata of humankind. The Pastoral Constitution of the Church would explicitly state that the Church ﾓis bound to no particular form of human culture, nor to any political, economic or social systemﾔ (Gaudium et Spes, 42) and because the Church is free from these limiting identifications, it can become the ﾓbondﾔ between diverse communities and nations. Conversely, all of humankind, the Council declared, is called to become members of the People of God. (Lumen Gentium, 13).

The mission

This universal vocation became the foundation of my emerging apostolate, as a young Franciscan and later as a priest.

Forty years went by. I stayed in the European universities during the sixties and early seventies. Then, I came to the United States. I worked as a missionary priest for brief periods in Latin America, as a priest psychologist for several years in Chicago and finally, for twenty years, as a married priest in the high-tech industry in the United States and Western Europe. All along, I thought I was contributing to the expansion of the People of God and so did my wife Therese. Now, in the mature years of our life we find ourselves still compelled to advance as active members of the People of God in a new century, living in a ﾓmodern worldﾔ that differs considerably from that of 1963, within a Church that reminds us of the pre-conciliar church.

If we revisit the original founding principles that flowed from the ecclesiology of Vatican II, we encounter again the community of believers, now in the twenty-first century but still called to bring the Good News of Salvation, Godﾒs plan for humankind, to all nations. And we recognize in all men and women the universal call to join this community. The challenging question is now how to fulfill this mission in todayﾒs world and in our own country. At first sight, the enormity of this task may not be evident.

Nearly 6 billion people live on earth today. Many of them spend their lives under abusive regimes and in abject poverty, often feeling victimized by the same societies that proclaim their Christianity. Others feel free to live their lives and to build their nations within democratic structures and economic systems that allow relative security and comfort, although these same systems often present imbedded injustices and destructive mechanisms. Others, a privileged few, have amassed fabulous wealth and have no direct experience of the economic uncertainties and the travails of ordinary people. The salvation story that we have to tell will have to reach all of them.

If we direct our attention closer to home, we see the growing Muslim population in our cities, the American Jews, the brown immigrants, the European transplants that lived most of their lives under communist regimes and, not least, the many fundamentalist groups with their own leaders and evangelists, well-adept to the mass media. And if we look into our own homes we encounter our young, the most affluent generation in history that takes the conveniences of our era for granted, but that struggles with expectations for a better life that will be increasingly hard to fulfill.

In broad strokes, this is the twenty-first century audience for the retelling of the Christian story. That story begins in the encounter with Christ and it evolves in our growing awareness of his identity, his message and his relationship with us. Lukeﾒs introduction of Jesusﾒ messianic mission (Lk 4:18-19), borrowing from Isaiah, points in a surprising direction: the one who was anointed by the Spirit of the Lord was sent to ﾓevangelize the beggars and the panhandlersﾔ,(ptoch￴is), and to ﾓset the downtrodden freeﾔ, (tethrausmenous). We are used to hear how the Messiah was sent to evangelize the ﾓpoorﾔ, but this word appears considerably sanitized in comparison with what the narrator of Lukeﾒs gospel was saying and what the Greek-speaking audience was hearing. He was sent to the beggars, the panhandlers and the underdog.

No wonder the ruling classes in Latin America found this announcement subversive when it was preached to the destitute crowds of that continent in the late 1960s. Even more so, when the destitute became the heralds of this message within their local communities and when they put this outrageous message into songs and paintings, and when it became part of their personal and communal experience. It was as though, finally, the God that had been brought to the indigenous people of the Americas by the Europeans had done something especially for them: He had sent his own Son to them.

But then ﾖ as the wealthy Latin Americans asked in the sixties ﾖ is there any hope for the rest of us? Who is this God that shows such preference for the least among us? How do we participate in the inheritance of the beggars? Even Christﾒs early friends, the Apostles, were concerned about their own eligibility to enter Godﾒs Kingdom. When Jesus tells them that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God, they are ﾓastonishedﾔ and wonder, ﾓthen, who can be saved?ﾔ (Mt 19:25). The same event, with identical wording, is reported in the Gospel of Mark (Mr 10:26) and Luke (Lu 18:26).

On the other hand, in the solemn scene of Mt 25:31-46, where the resurrected Christ introduces the redeemed to the Kingdom of his Father, he reveals the criteria by which everyone will be found worthy of sharing in the inheritance of the beggars. ﾓI tell you solemnlyﾗhe saysﾗthat in so far as you did this to one of the least of my brothers, you did it to me.ﾔ He is referring to our acts of kindness for those who are hungry, thirsty, in a strange land, or sick or in prison. These are the ones that he calls the least of his brothers. He, who is the only way to the Father, chooses to be found in our encounter with the least of his brothers. His brothers are then the sacrament of his redeeming presence in the world; through them we meet him personally and this encounter performs the reconciliation with the Father and our establishment as the citizens of the Kingdom.

In many ways, it may not be self-evident who these people are in our society and how we can reach out to them, or more precisely, what the least of his brothers need today from all of us.

If this is the final criterion by which we will all be found worthy (or unworthy) of the Kingdom of God (Mt. 25:46), we may want to apply ourselves, with all our capabilities and talents, to the fulfillment of this call, addressed to all of Christﾒs disciples until he returns.

Who are then the downtrodden of our century? The heroic examples of service and dedication that have reached us through the history of the Church have been for the most part bound to a culture and a geography. In fact, the men and women of past centuries rarely left their towns and villages and had very limited exposure, if any, to the life conditions of other societies. We, in exchange, live in a global village, with real-time knowledge of even minute details of life in distant places. More than that, our choices and actions can and do have tangible impact on millions and even billions of people, worldwide. For us, the parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk 10:37) takes a new dimension: our neighbor is in fact any man or woman or child, of any culture, rank or language.

The message in action

Today, we donﾒt need to be close to the needy to be aware of them. In fact, we may be more profoundly conscious of the distress of many through the free flow of information and the accumulated data about our fellow citizens than through direct observation. Consider for instance the harsh realities of the 17.5 million American households with a single parent, the 35 million people living within the poverty range in this country, the nearly 6% of workers without jobsﾗnot to count the many millions who are off the records or have been downgraded to more humble occupationsﾗthe 43.2 million without health insurance while the cost of health care is skyrocketing ($1.55 trillion in 2002, 15% of G.D.P.), and the nearly 2 million people in the U.S. prison system.

From this point of view, using mercy for Christﾒs brothers will not necessarily be accomplished by the occasional act of generosity or the routine participation in charitable activities such as food pantries, children protection initiatives or parochial fund-raising. It could be argued that the fact itself of needing food pantries and homeless shelters in our immensely rich and powerful society raise questions about the fundamental fairness of our institutions and the wise utilization of our resources. TC l1 "

Perhaps the parable of the Talents (Mt 25:14-30) may suggest a new direction. In Matthewﾒs account, the man who is leaving on a journey entrusted his possession to his servants. At his return, he settled accounts with them, expecting and demanding a return on his assets. He then rewarded the servants who had grown his investments and punished the one who had not.

We are, of course, the servants to whom the Creator has entrusted the world, as said in the book of Genesis: ﾓGod blessed them and God said to them: be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earthﾔ (Gen 1:28). In the words of Vatican II, we are called ﾓto order the temporal affairs according to the plan of Godﾔ (Gaudium and Spes, 31). The plan of God in Matthew 25 is to put us in each otherﾒs hands, to love and to care for each other, especially for those in greatest need.

If millions of our brothers and sisters languish in poverty or cannot afford to feed and educate their children, then that is our problem. If millions of productive Americans and many others around the world live in the humiliation of unemployment or cannot afford medical services for their families, that is also our problem. When so many of our children go to school hungry and return home in fear because their neighborhoods are not safe, we have a serious problem to solve. When our scientists warn us that our industry is producing climatic changes that threaten millions of species and our own safety on earth, we carry a responsibility to find a solution. When we hear that millions of people are dying of AIDS in Africa, we have a sacred mandate to act.

Of course, these problems cannot be solved through the generosity and dedication of any one as an individual, although we all have ample opportunities to personally contribute to the care of the most needy among us. A cooperative effort is necessary, using the global communications means at our disposal, the technological resources of our time and the political structures of our society (our talents). It is here that we embrace Christﾒs message and mission in the concrete context in which we live. We receive the promise of salvation and the strength of the Spirit, while we turn our attention to the world around us and the men and women in that world. In fact, Vatican II admonishes the faithful that ﾓthe Christian who neglects his temporal duties, neglects his duties towards his neighbors and even God, and jeopardizes his eternal salvationﾔ (Gaudium et Spes, 43).

In practical terms, my proposition suggests that caring for Christﾒs favored brothers requires the serious commitment on the part of all members of the Christian community, the People of God on earth, to effectively adapt the resources of society to the actual needs of all the people, including, and specifically, those whom Christ favors. This adaptation may take different forms and be susceptible to frequent modifications, but it cannot stray from the path of loyal solidarity with Christﾒs brothers.

The American story

Up to this point, I have been telling the global story, the universal epic of Godﾒs People and its mission. Most Christians would be comfortable with this vision. But the story may become unsettling if I try to apply it to our concrete situation. Each one of us, and our entire society, will have to tell their own story as it relates to the establishment of Godﾒs Kingdom. For us, this will be an American tale. It is time to start telling it.

We often tell each other to ﾓcount our blessingsﾔ or to be ﾓthankful for the blessings we have receivedﾔ. We are very aware of how ﾓblessedﾔ we are for all the goods that we enjoy while they are so unattainable for most of the 6 billion inhabitants of our earth. We also know that we are the most productive people in the world. The output per man-hour in the United States is the highest anywhere and it keeps rising. Recent statistics show that productivity in the U.S. has been increasing at a rate of about 5% per year, in spite of the recent economic recession.

It is easy to conclude that we are ﾓblessedﾔ because we are good, and productive, and enterprising. It is also easy to conclude that the ﾓothersﾔ are ﾓnot blessedﾔ. After all, their productivity does not grow 5% per year and their societies do not reward entrepreneurship. The story we have been telling each other is one where ﾓGod has shed his grace on theeﾔ, preferentially and deservedly. The proof of Godﾒs blessings on us is that we have so much, and we have so much because we are so good and productive. Perhaps if the ﾓothersﾔ worked harder, as we do, God would bless them too.

That is not the Christian story of this century or any other century. We will have to tell our story in the context of Christﾒs mission to free the downtrodden and to announce the good news to the beggars. We know that the worldﾒs order and harmony and the well-being of humankind is the responsibility of the community of believers. We, the American believers, live in the wealthiest and most powerful country in history; in other words, we have most of the talents ﾓto order the temporal affairs according to the plan of Godﾔ, consequently, our ministry for the least of Christﾒs brothers takes a new compelling force.

As a community, we the American Church, the People of God in America, have the mandate to defend, care and advocate for the least of Christﾒs brothers, with the same passion with which we defend the rights of the unborn or the sanctity of marriage and with the same creativity with which we build our economy. We live, in fact, in a democratic society. As individuals and community members, we have the personal responsibility to participate in the democratic process, to use the modern mass media to voice our priorities on behalf of Christﾒs brothers, to associate with others for the purpose of promoting justice and fairness in our institutions and, of course, to cast our votes in accordance with these priorities.

Our extraordinary productivity and imagination are not ﾓblessingsﾔ until they are used ﾓto order the temporal affairs according to the plan of Godﾔ. They are in fact ﾓtalentsﾔ that must produce abundant gains.

As Americans and entrepreneurs we are comfortable with demanding attention to the bottom line. In the light of Christﾒs preferences the bottom line is the well-being of the most needy among us, which may require that we take positions that are unpopular or unusual. For example, if we spend $1.55 trillion a year in health care but we still have 43 million people without health care coverage, the human bottom line is showing a loss. We have not been good administrators of the talents received. It is our obligation to reverse this situation, even if we might have to oppose powerful special interests and well-financed political forces. A vote for the status quo would not be in harmony with the plan of God.

Many of us today look with satisfaction at the stock market trends and we note the growth of our investments. Our leaders tell us also that the economy is strong and getting better. But if the recovery does not generate jobs to employ the displaced workers and new opportunities for the young workers getting into the labor force, we have not fulfilled what Gaudium and Spes calls our ﾓtemporal dutiesﾔ. The human bottom line is still showing a loss.

As a member of the community of nations and the only superpower of this century, our society has also a mission with global impact. Christ will ask us what we did with the millions who die of hunger and curable illnesses everyday. He promised to take it personally, very personally: ﾓI was hungry and you did not feed meﾔ. We can certainly use our enormous power, riches and influence to establish fair trade pacts, to strengthen the international organizations that care for the needy around the world, to finance initiatives that improve the lives of disadvantaged people, and to truly invest in remote lands and their people.

We can argue that we already do all of this through the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, etc. Perhaps, but we withhold millions in payments to the United Nations because we donﾒt like some of its practices and we donﾒt hesitate to declare it ineffective if it does not go along with our interests abroad, such as the attack on Iraq. Extended areas in Africa and other places have plunged into destitution and famine because of the demands of the World Bank to develop specialized production that can no longer support the basic needs of the local population. We rejoice in the successes of NAFTA, but ignore the plight of large numbers of Mexican workers in the awful barrios of the border towns.

I could list many other opportunities offered to us as a nation and as individuals to meet Christ in those who he favors. In fact, a true American story would have to include many other aspects of our community life, such as our role as employees and shareholders of the small and large corporate entities, as members of organized labor, as participants in a variety of associations and clubs. But I will have to leave all that for another time. These issues deserve to be specifically addressed and debated.

I would like to conclude with the message of courage and hope of the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes, 40): ﾓthe Church believes she can contribute greatly toward making the family of man and its history more human.ﾔ We the American believers, moved by the Spirit of Christ and rooted in the democratic values of our country, have the talents and capabilities to render our world more human and our society more suitable for human development, open to all people and anchored in justice and creative freedom.

Manuel can be reached at mmunquial@sbcglobal.net