I remember

I remember when my friend Beth read me this section out of "Poverty" by Ranerio Cantalamessa 2 1/2 yrs ago. i had no idea where the quote came from. i didn't remember all the nuances - but the ideas have run around in my brain countless times since i first heard it. A couple nights ago i was working on my WMF reading...and i read this...it was like bumping into an old friend unexpectedly. well, maybe not friend, but these truths have had such a big impact on me...

“Imagine that one day you are watching pictures of some disaster on television – a rail crash, a road accident, a fire or a collapsed building – and you suddenly recognize a close relative amount the victims: your mother, your brother or your husband. How loudly you would cry out! What a change in your heart compared to a moment ago! How interested you would become in the event! What has happened? A very simple thing: What you only noticed with your eyes and brain before, you now perceive with your heart. Well, this is what ought to happen, at least to some degree, when certain scenes of harrowing misery pass before our eyes. Are these people our brothers and sisters or not? Don’t we all belong to the same human family, and is it not written that we are all “members of one another” (Rm 12:5)?
Unfortunately we cannot get used to anything in time, and we have grown accustomed to other people’s misery. It only affects us to a degree, we almost take it for granted as inevitable. However, let us look at it from God’s point of view for a moment, and try to see things as He sees them. Think of a father with seven children; at every meal the same thing happens; two of the children grab everything on the table, leaving the other five unfed. Can a father remain unmoved at such at thing? Someone one compared the earth to a spaceship in which one of the three cosmonauts on board consumes 85% of the available resources, while plotting how to take over the remaining 15% as well.”