A Time of Listening Listening. The ancient expect us to listen. The seven generations who will come expect us to listen. Prayer with the Early Church emphasized the twofold path of prayer and love as a conversation. Abba Poemen said, “Not understanding what has happened prevents us from going on to something better.” ( The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection, trans. Benedicta Ward, S.L.G., rev. ed (London and Oxford: Mowbray, 1981), p200. If we listen to the injuries of our neighbor, if we listen to the injuries of generations of trauma, we can begin to make change. And in this way, as I've written, we can become a church in the streets . We come to our advocacy for immigrants informed by outrage, lament, and renewed conviction. Charged to confront structural violence, police murder of George Floyd, endemic inequity, we carry in penance as a community a great task of moral import. For months, absorbed, allowing our advocacy to pause, we took up the scriptures

    Fight the plight   Come to the catechism of the poor.   The age of conviction may as well be now. We were former persons. Veterans, we work, were former union members. We got degrees in college. You call us homeless, forget we are persons, a misnomer that goes about solving nothing. Who we are matters because you are dealing with a person. A broken down reality, who all the time must wipe your tears, who must wait on you. Patience, come quick, one paycheck away, one health care crisis away and another joins us on the front lines. “Every major ill in this country is embedded in the person that is homeless,” as Willie Baptist says. The antibodies are right here—we are survivors who just couldn’t afford a place to stay.   Should you be in doubt, rest not. Should you want to shed a tear, go not to your sister or your brother. For we are a family denying the cry of the poor. Like wolves “shedding blood and destroying lives to get unjust gain” says the prophet Ezekiel. The priests, says