8/18/2017 - St Alberto Hurtado - Friday of the 20th week of Ordinary Time - Psalm 136

      What are our priorities in life?  How much are we willing to give up to follow Christ?  We have so much that pulls for our attention in our journey through life.  Christ and the values of God’s kingdom are to have a central place in our lives if we are truly be his disciples.  Pope Paul VI once wrote - “If you want peace, work for justice.”  We have to be able to put into words and actions the values of the Kingdom.  They cannot remain just lofty ideals for us. So when we hear the psalmist declare “His mercy endures forever”, How are we living out God’s mercy in our lives and bringing that mercy to others?  

      The saint for the day is Alberto Hurtado.  He was a Jesuit priest from the country of Chile who was born in 1901.  He is only the second saint to come from the country of Chile - the first was the Carmelite nun St Teresa of the Andes who was made one of the patron saints of the youth by Pope John Paul II.  Hurtado’s father died when he was young, so his family’s home had to be sold to pay off his family’s debts.  He lived with various relatives while growing up.  He thus experienced first-hand what it meant to be poor and to be without a permanent home.  He was ordained as a Jesuit priest, where he devoted his ministry to working with the youth and the poor and to promoting social justice issues.  He is most famous in Chile for having founded the Hogar de Cristo, Christ’s home, which was a home that reached out to children and youth who needed food or shelter, modeled after Boy’s Town in the United States.  When I studied in Chile during the summer of 2002 while I was a teacher at Greenville High School, I was able to visit the Hogar de Cristo, marveling at what a wonderful operation it was.  Hurtado said this about his ministry: “I hold that every poor man, every vagrant, every beggar is Christ carrying his cross.   And as Christ, we much love and help him.  We must treat him as brother, a human being like ourselves.”  As St Alberto Hurtado found a way to challenge him selves and challenge others in living out the values of Christ, how are we doing the same?