Missionaries of the Sacred

Homelessness in the United States

It is sometimes hard to fathom that in one of the richest countries in the world, such as the United States that we have between 600,000 to 2.5 million homeless persons.¹ This will be the focus of our attention for our February JPIC Corner. We will show some startling information about homelessness in the United States as well as offer solutions to this crisis. First we will examine our Christian responsibility towards the homelessness.

On February 14, 2010 our Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI visited the homeless shelter at Termini Station in Rome. He addressed the homeless, “Know that the Church loves you profoundly and won’t abandon you, because it recognizes in every one of your faces, the face of Christ.² When  we respond to our neighbors in need, we are feeding, clothing, and sheltering Jesus, “Amen I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.”³ Acts of charity properly belong to the mission of the Church. As disciples of Jesus, we cannot ignore our social responsibilities towards our neighbors in need. It is the spirit of the 7th commandment that we are summoned to offer shelter to our brothers and sisters who have no place to rest in the evening.⁴ Those who shelter the homeless witness to the love of Christ for his abandoned. They assist them to rediscover their dignity and worth as human beings. Christian homeless shelters offer “a concrete manifestation of the collaboration of the Christian community with civil institutions to promote the ‘common good” and thereby offer a ‘true school’ in which youth and other volunteers can learn to be ‘builders of a civilization of love, capable of taking in others in their uniqueness and differences.”⁵