Silvio Cuéllar | OSV News
A few months ago, on a Sunday morning, I was leaving Blessed Sacrament Church in Providence after singing at two English Masses. As I drove to take my daughter Gaby to a meeting with her friends, we experienced something that still makes me reflect deeply today.
Halfway there, at a street corner, we saw a man on the ground, trembling uncontrollably. He appeared to be suffering from a drug overdose.
My daughter and I looked at each other, moved and also a bit paralyzed. For a moment, we didn’t know what to do. We wondered whether someone else had already called 911. Yet I couldn’t stop thinking: What if we were the first to see him? What if other cars had already passed by, indifferent to his suffering? At that moment, the parable of the Good Samaritan came to mind, and I realized we couldn’t keep going as if nothing were happening.
We called emergency services, reporting the situation and giving the exact location. I continued driving another 10 blocks to drop off my daughter at the other church where she was meeting her friends. Passing through the same corner on my way back, I was relieved to see firefighters and an ambulance already there. The man who had been convulsing minutes earlier was now sitting up, alert and receiving help.
In my heart, I felt that perhaps we helped save a life that day.
This experience reminded me how easy it is for our society to become indifferent to the suffering of others. We live at a time when many people are isolated, wounded, struggling with addiction, poverty, depression or loneliness. That is why, during this Christmas season — and especially in a country where we see so many human challenges on our own streets — we need more than ever to recover the true meaning of the Gospel.
Jesus makes it clear in Matthew 25: He identifies himself with those who are hungry, sick, homeless or abandoned. Our Christian faith is not proven only inside the church building, but in our willingness to stop, to see and to act. To be Christian is to make God’s compassion present where others only see problems or burdens.
I also want to remind you, dear readers, that Christmas does not end on Christmas Eve. The church invites us to contemplate the mystery of the Incarnation for several weeks — from the octave of Christmas, through the Epiphany, until the feast of the Baptism of the Lord (although some Catholics continue the celebration to the feast of the Presentation of the Lord on Feb. 2). It is a prolonged season meant to transform us through the love God showed by becoming a small, fragile and humble child.
Our help can begin locally by generously supporting your parish through your weekly offering, donating to a food pantry, soup kitchen or any cause close to your heart. And let us not forget the poorest of the poor around the world — those living in extreme need — whom we can help through the U.S. Catholic Bishops’ agency for international humanitarian aid, Catholic Relief Services.
Let us remember the phrase: Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.
Christmas continues every time we reach out to someone suffering; every time we welcome the stranger, accompany the sick, or feed the hungry. It continues when we choose to see Christ in the poorest among us. It continues when we break through indifference and become instruments of hope.
May the Lord grant us the grace to be modern Good Samaritans, and may we be able to tell Jesus every day — not just at Christmas — “Here I am, Lord, ready to serve you in your most vulnerable brothers and sisters.”
Silvio Cuéllar is a writer, liturgical music composer and journalist. He was coordinator of the Hispanic ministry office and editor of the newspaper El Católico de Rhode Island, the newspaper of the Diocese of Providence.