Reflection
Mass for the Deceased Homeless | November
8, 2012
A
few weeks ago I had the privilege of attending the dedication of a new
permanent memorial to the homeless who’ve died in our city. The
memorial is called the Tree of Remembrance, and it’s located in Victor
Steinbrueck Park, near Pike Place Market. If you haven’t had the
chance to visit it yet, I would recommend you do so, as it’s really
quite beautiful. The memorial is in the shape of a stylized tree,
with cutouts in the shape of leaves, representing homeless persons who
have died scattered throughout our community. I was quite moved by
some of the comments made at the dedication by the sculptor who created
the tree. In referring to the leaves, and the deceased homeless
persons they represent, he used the word “lost” – the leaves are lost,
just as the homeless persons they represent are lost. I must tell
you, that word “lost” has been haunting me ever since.
We come together tonight to remember those same homeless persons who are
memorialized in the Tree of Remembrance, those who have lost their lives
on our streets this past year, and who, even in life, were in many ways
lost to us. Did you know that we have over 8,000 homeless people
living here in King County alone? Did you know that, according to
some studies, about 40% of the homeless are children? About 20%
are victims of domestic violence? About 40% of homeless men are
veterans? If you didn’t know some of these statistics, you’re not
alone. In a very real sense, the homeless right here in our
community are unseen, forgotten, invisible – in a word, lost – lost to a
culture that is too busy to see them, too distracted to see them, or too
often simply does not wish to see them.
People often ask: what causes homelessness? And the response I
hear over and over again from those who know best – people who study
homelessness, people who work in agencies and ministries trying to
respond to homelessness, people who are or have been homeless – they all
say the same thing – there is no single cause. There are, instead,
a whole host of factors that contribute to homelessness, but all of them
have to do with some kind of loss. It may be the loss of a job, or
the loss of family connections, the loss of the struggle against
addiction, or the loss of health, or the loss of mental health.
Homelessness certainly has to do with the loss of a home, and, very
often, the loss of hope. And in the case of the 57 people we
remember and pray for tonight, homelessness also contributed to the
ultimate loss – the loss of their lives.
Amid all of this loss, we turn to Scripture for words of meaning and
hope. The first reading, from the book of Lamentations, expresses
our sense of loss and grief. Hear again the words: “My soul is
deprived of peace, I have forgotten what happiness is…the thought of my
homeless poverty is wormwood and gall, …” The author of those
words knows loss, deeply and profoundly. He names it, he speaks
it, he does not run from it or sugarcoat it. And yet, even from
the depths of such grief, he reminds us that we are not alone in our
losses, that God stands with us: “This I will call to mind, as my
reason to have hope. The favors of the Lord are not exhausted, his
mercies are not spent, so great is his faithfulness.”
Tonight’s Gospel readings are also about losses – but more than that,
they’re about a faithful God who is unrelenting in his searching, and
overjoyed in his finding. Today we hear two parables about losing
and finding, the parable of the good shepherd who searches and finds the
lost sheep, and the parable of the woman who searches and finds her lost
coin. These parables are found in the 15th chapter of Luke, which
also contains a third parable about losing and finding – the famous
story of the prodigal son, who was lost to his father, and whose
homecoming was the source of such joy. Each of these parables
gives us an image of a God who will go to impractical, unrealistic, even
foolish extremes to find and reclaim what has been lost. It’s
foolish, isn’t it, for a shepherd to abandon 99 sheep to search for one
that has become lost – will not the 99 also wander off and become lost
while the shepherd is off searching for the one? Likewise, it
seems foolish by our standards of efficiency for a woman to stay up all
night searching her house for one lost coin – especially since she
immediately calls her neighbors to celebrate with her when it’s found –
surely the cost of the celebration will be more than the value of the
coin she’s spent all night looking for! But God’s faithfulness and
mercy are beyond our notions of what’s sensible – these stories tell us
that God will stop at nothing to reunite us to himself. If the
sculptor of the memorial tree was right – if we can think of our
homeless brothers and sisters as lost – then surely we can be consoled
by the image of a faithful God who will not stop in his efforts to find
them and to bring them back – back to community, back to health, back to
homes. And, for those homeless persons who have died, and who we
remember tonight, bring them back home to himself to share in his
eternal life.
And what about those of us who are housed – where do we find ourselves
in these readings? I think if we’re honest, we’d have to admit
that we are also lost. Yes, we may still have jobs, and health,
and intact families. We may still have homes, but haven’t we also
become lost? Hasn’t our society lost its moral compass when we
tolerate persistent homelessness, when we accept it as business as usual
so that it becomes invisible to us? Hasn’t our economic system
lost its way when a growing percentage of our people are left behind,
unable to earn a living wage despite hard work and diligence? As a
nation, we’ve recently been riveted by the pictures of so many people on
the East Coast who have been made temporarily homeless by Hurricane
Sandy. We have been deeply moved by the suffering of those who
took refuge in emergency shelters and by the outpouring of generosity
and caring from so many who’ve responded to their suffering.
Hurricane Sandy was front page news for days, and rightly so, but
thousands of people are chronically homeless every day, storm or no
storm, right here in our city and across our country, and that
persistent homelessness fails to make headlines. Our tradition of
Catholic Social Teaching tell us that the moral measure of a society is
the way in which its most vulnerable members are faring – by this
measure, I think it’s fair to say that yes, we as a society are also
pretty lost.
My brothers and sisters, it doesn’t need to be this way. We don’t
need to remain lost. The good news of the Gospel is that God does
not will for us to be lost. The good news of the Gospel is that
God is faithful; God’s mercy extends to all of us, the homeless and the
housed. Just as there is rejoicing over the return of the lost
sheep, the lost coin and the lost son, so too does God desire the return
of all of us to a more just vision of society, a society in which no one
is forgotten, no one is homeless, in which no one is lost.
Tonight, as we pray for and remember our homeless brothers and sisters
who have died in our community, let us resolve to continue our work of
finding homes for every one of us.
Patty Bowman
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