Christmas Delivery

On Saturday, my parish made the annual Christmas delivery of food and packages to needy families in our parish boundaries. Few of these families attend St. Pius (although over the years I've delivered to a couple parishioners). I don't know their stories or their faces, although they are my neighbors, at least in the same zip code or just one over. We go down into our church basement cafeteria where there are boxes upon boxes--literally--for over 100 families. One of our families was #106 and I know there were others stacked next to it. Our St. Vincent de Paul Society does the work with the help from parishioners who take the gift tags from the tree in the back of church and bring back wrapped presents, and also from a couple of other parishes in more well-to-do areas who are responding to the Christian call to charity.

We walk in and greet one another. Sophia and Maeve have donuts. People dote on Leo. This was one of the first parish-wide activities Mike and I participated in. We chat with folks we don't see all the time--a few parish school graduates still calling me "Mrs. Wissinger." Our pastor says a prayer. This year he said this was St. Pius at its best--that we go out to be Christ to others and in the process encounter Christ ourselves. It reminded me of the CS Lewis note that besides the Eucharist, our encounters with each other are the holiest moments in any day. No matter how difficult we may be with each other, even hostile, there is still Christ in each of us. A spark of divinity.

We haul our packages out to our cars--one of our families, adopted by a county parish, had 11 boxes. The other had 1, just food. We delivered the 11 boxes first, to a four-family flat on a rundown street. The house had a No Trespassing sign affixed to the porch. The front doors were replacements, flimsy, and it looked as though only one of the apartments was lived in. The next building over was boarded up, property of the city. We knocked, and a young man answered. He was impressed with the number of boxes. I have no idea what might have been inside. I was simply delivering. He signed his name on the back of the form and we went on.

The next house was on an even more depressed block, really only half a street, the houses on one side facing a parking lot and the backs of fast food restaurants on the other.

The man in the camo jacket opened the door and Mike handed him the sack of potatoes. I came up the steps behind with the heavier box. I handed it over to Mike, who was engaged in conversation with the recipient. The name on our form was a woman's, but he said he was her husband...and she was in a coma...and he'd been to the hospital today and had taken her off life support.

I don't know. Maybe it was a fabrication. Maybe it was an attempt to get something else from us--but what? We pulled away from his house and headed over to Gravois. I thought about it. If it were true, there he was in his shotgun house, alone. I thought about human connections at any time of year, but especially at Christmas. Being as blessed as I am with friends and family, I cannot imagine such a situation without my sisters and neighbors and friends from church being there by my side. Maybe one day I will find myself so alone, but what is the road chosen to bring someone to that point?

And then I thought about my own family, about my dad's older brother who burned through all his contacts before I was even born. But even Rick, if he needed help, could find it with a phone call. Maybe my dad's younger brother Kelly would find himself like this. Maybe.

And last, I thought about the people I do know who are on the edges of my life. Would I be there for Kate or Carlos or Millie if they were to call in desperation? If they called in desperation twice or a hundred times? Would I keep opening my door to them, to Christ?

I hope I would.