December 19, 2011 Christmas Dinner with the poor
On Christmas Day in the 1970's, the late Archbishop
Frank Rush of Brisbane used to put on an apron and serve
Christmas Dinner for the homeless people at the city's St Vincent de Paul center
On Christmas Day 1972, Jesuit Fr Rick Thomas
and his USA El Paso prayer group
went across the border to Juarez in Mexico,
taking enough food for a Christmas Dinner for 150 people who eked out a living
at the local rubbish dump.
300 people showed up, but the food didn't run out. There was even plenty left
over.
Google "the miracle of the rubbish dump" for this beautiful true story
Some of my happiest memories are of Christmas Day with the poor at Zhaoqing in China:
2005 - Christmas Dinner was a lunch box with the poor who lived at a local rubbish dump, just like the people in Juarez
In Hong Kong, I'm trying to keep up the custom of Christmas Dinner with
the poor:
2009 Christmas
Dinner with homeless men in Hong Kong
December 25 this year I'm due to have Christmas
Dinner with some 40 former inmates, most of them drug addicts,
at the Caritas Center in Yau Ma Tei, Hong Kong. DV this
link will have photos after Dec 26
From Sr Carmel Pilcher's article of December 12:
So let’s review the way we celebrate Christmas, both
in our homes and our churches.
Our Christmas liturgies should invite us, not to remember a helpless baby in a
stable,
but the Christ in the poor and helpless.
The face of the Christ of the manger is to be found in a refugee boat, a
detention centre or a prison.
Let’s think again about our many end of year
‘Christmas’ banquets and lavish gift giving.
Could our banquets become simple meals and our gifts more modest
so that our wealth might be shared with the Christ who is starving and homeless?
Along with our family and friends, will we invite the lonely and frail to our
Christmas table? (Full
article)
John Wotherspoon