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A spiritual comment and prayer to start the day with Michael Kelly

Good morning!

Many years ago, I travelled to Rome for the first time. I was a teenager, almost penniless and lived on the street food of the Eternal City: pizza al taglio – literally slices of pizza sold by weight.

I fell in love with everything about the place: the art, the architecture, the churches, the way of life, the food, the wine – the famous dolce vita.

It was also the first time that I was really exposed to rough sleeping – as the nightlife of the city started to take off each evening, people of all ages and backgrounds would start to bed down on the cobbled streets – a flattened cardboard box as their mattress, a coat as a makeshift blanket.

But I also noticed an army of young university students who were dropping off packages to the men, women and children experiencing homelessness. Food parcels, I thought, and that was part of the picture – but I soon learned that the students were members of a community based in Trastevere who collected the meagre clothes from the people they served – that was the word they used – the people they served, and washed and ironed them before returning them.

This same community is still active in Rome, and indeed in many cities of the world there is a silent army of volunteers conscious that they can’t themselves ‘fix’ a complex reality like homelessness, but they can at least try to bind up the wounds and offer small acts of love and service.

So, today I pray in thanksgiving for those heroic people who see the needs around them, refuse to be overwhelmed, and roll up their sleeves.

Amen.

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