Behold, at that time I will deal with all your oppressors. And I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth.
Once, during a period of persecution in the third century, the Roman officials got the notion that the Christians in the Church at Rome had squirreled away a vast amount of loot in their catacombs somewhere. So they marched off to the Church and confronted St. Lawrence who was a deacon of the Roman Church and demanded he hand over all the treasure of the Church. The deacon smilingly obliged and went off to find the Church's widows, orphans, beggars and sick people.
Bringing them to the Church at the appointed deadline, he presented them to the Roman officials, saying, "Here are the Church's true treasures." It is a great paradox of the faith that, in becoming poor and despised himself, Jesus Christ has changed the shame of the poor, weak, and helpless into praise and renown in all the earth.
Today, ask God to help you do some concrete act of good for the poor. "Inasmuch as you did it to the least of these my brethren, you did it to me."
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