Many years ago, when I was still a young priest � it is hard for us older folks to remember that far back � I traveled to Calcutta with the Servant of God, Cardinal Terence Cooke. He was Archbishop of New York at the time and his Cause for beatification is in Rome even now. He had wanted to visit Mother Teresa of Calcutta and we landed there late one evening and found our way to the hotel. The next day some of the great Missionaries of Charity came to bring the Cardinal and me to the Mother House where Mother Teresa would receive us and show us something of the works of the apostolate of her Missionaries of Charity in the teeming city of Calcutta.
It was an experience that I will never forget. Mother Teresa was one of those extraordinary people that one meets only rarely during the whole passage of a lifetime. She had an unfailing joyfulness. How much more impressive this is today when, from her writings and letters, we realize that she suffered from the dark night of the soul for many years even until the end of her life. She lived for the poor, for the poorest of the poor, and gave her entire life in their service. Nothing was too menial, too difficult, too demeaning for her to enter it with joy and with enthusiasm. She was truly one of the remarkable people I have ever met.
Somewhere in the convent where we met her, there was a copy of that great photo of Calcutta which many of you may have seen. I bought a copy for myself, as a matter of fact, but in the changes and wanderings that priests find so often in their lives I lost it somewhere along the journey.
It is the photo of a crowded street in Calcutta. To say crowded really does not give it sufficient meaning. You can only see people wall-to-wall, building to building, totally surrounding every automobile, every kiosk, every door, every store, every place. There are people everywhere. It seems impossible even to move within the multitudes of people who are gathered in this busy downtown street of Calcutta. Of course, they must have been able to move or they would have been jammed there until the end of time. But looking at it from the height at which the photo was taken, it almost seems that they were packed in and unable to move. It is the picture of a teeming, busy, vital city. I believe that the first time I saw it was there with Mother Teresa. Someone had perhaps given her the photo as a replica of the city to which she was so dedicated, to remind her of the people of that city to whom she and her sisters were readily and joyfully giving their lives.
I remember saying something about the photo, perhaps commenting that I had never seen a crowd like that ever before in my life. It was a moment to remember. Comments were made by others as we gazed on this famous photo of the crowded streets of Calcutta. Someone said �How can anyone find food to feed them all.� And someone else said: �What a blessing it is that we are called to serve each one of them�. Most of us, as we looked at it, expressed the wonder that people could survive in so closed in and overcrowded a situation. Some wondered how ordinary business could be transacted because of the crowds. Others wondered where all these people would find a place to live when once they returned from the downtown city to their own homes.
This is the city. This is the concept of which we are speaking this afternoon. It is a place where men and women gather to accomplish things, to build, to exchange, to do business, to sell and to buy, to make a profit, to pick a pocket, to meet a friend.
Whatever one might say about a city, it is surely a place where life is. It is surely a place where humanity in all its wonder, in all its suffering and in all its joy finds itself crowded together to seek whatever the human heart might seek.
As you imagine this crowded picture of Calcutta, I can compare it to many other cities that I have been privileged to visit. One thinks of Shanghai before the modernization which has really changed it into a sparkling, new and exciting city. In the old days, it was filled with bicycles and a photo, such as that of Calcutta, could have been taken, of thousands of two-wheelers rushing down and back across the avenues, so locked together that one wonders how they could find a lane in which to move forward. One thinks of many of the other cities in Asia crowded with rickshaws, cars and trucks and people carrying cripples on their shoulders, a vast m�lange of mankind, all with a purpose in mind and, because of the crowded nature of the place, all facing the counter purposes of each one standing in the other�s way. How does one make sense out of the great cities like this? How does one survive in them? How does one find God in them? How does one find happiness as one lives among the teeming multitudes of our world?
I have looked at these pictures and walked through them and lived them and heard many remarks from spectators like myself. Some might say, �They should put order into these crowds.� And as they said it, they had to become conscious of the impossibility of such an adventure. Others would say, �How sad it is that people must be like ants, running helter-skelter across the pavements of the world.� Others will say, �How strange and wonderful it is that people from all walks of life can find themselves there in the city, not necessarily at home, because the streets of the city are not likely to offer themselves as a place of refuge and security.� But still, as one tries to see the faces of the multitudes, one realizes that each one of them, no matter how little space they may have, no matter how difficult their lives may be, each of them has that wondrous element of life which is a gift from God and makes us different from all other living creatures because it puts us somehow in touch with the God Who loves us.
God in the city. It is a wonderful concept or maybe a mystery and one that perhaps gives us more room for reflection rather than for scientific concentration. God in the city reminds us that wherever two or three are present, there He is in the midst of us, so God must be present in an extraordinary way in the cities of our world. It is true that He is present in His sustaining power because without Him no one of us would survive. It is true that He is present with His knowledge, for He knows the inmost secrets of every heart, no matter how many we are. He knows us individually. We believe that His knowledge of us is do deep that He knows us much better than we could ever know ourselves.
We believe that He is present to us in His love. What a difference that makes to us who are the inhabitants of these cities. How rich it makes our lives to be loved by God, to be invited to join His life, even if it means to join in His suffering, in His patience, even if it means to live in hope for the things we long for, for the life that is to come, for an end of the crowded mechanistic world in which we live, to find ourselves once more perhaps in that land from which we came, that land of God�s enormous love, to find ourselves walking in the grass of eternity, enveloped by His goodness and given new life by His loving hand.
As we look at these photos of a crowded world, of a city filled with many different faces and many different troubles, we can truly ask about the place of God in the midst of these overwhelming crowds. We can ask where God is in the hustle and bustle of these cities. We can look for Him in the faces of the people and maybe even more deeply we can look for Him as we try to read their hearts. God is present in the great cities. There is a place for Him. Let us find it.
He is present in the places of worship that are spread around all the neighborhoods of the great cities, be they churches and synagogues or temples or mosques. Wherever they are, there is the Presence of one God for He truly is everywhere. Although we call him perhaps by different names, there is only one God. We, who are people of the Book, know this and we believe this with conviction and faith. It is this one God Whom we seek in the cities and Whom we find present wherever people raise their voices and their hearts to Him. And so, wherever we find a place of worship, there we can find the wondrous presence of God. We teach in the Catholic religion that God is everywhere and certainly we believe that He is everywhere in the hearts of people. Wherever anyone raises their eyes and hearts and hands to Him, He is present there in their midst. Wherever anyone brings Him their troubles, their joys, their griefs or their petitions, He is there to listen. And so, in places of worship throughout the communities of a big city, God is present in a special way.
God is present in the books of wisdom that we find in libraries, both public and private, throughout the great cities of the world. God is present there where men and women can read of Him. He is present wherever men and women search for truth. He is present in the poetry that gifted poets write, raising up their hearts to Him and asking Him to enlighten their feelings, their dreams and their hopes. God is present there in the libraries, in the collections of writings. God is present wherever men and women seek to know His love and His grace.
God is present in the hospitals and in the clinics, in the old people�s homes, wherever people are gathered who are hurting or suffering or lonesome or weary or fearful. God is present there inside the great cities where people long to yearn for His comforting presence, where they yearn to see His face. He is present wherever there is pain, present to help us carry the pain, present to overcome the pain, present to help us show His own pain and His own suffering when, as we Christians believe, as Man He came and suffered and died for us all.
God is present in the schools, in places where young men and young women learn the truth about nature, about the world, about history, about society, about all those mysteries both scientific and natural, both supernatural and human, that comprise the world of knowledge in which we live. The great cities are so often the repository of learning and knowledge and God is truly present in all knowledge. He is present in the desire to understand the world in which we live. Even more so, God is present in our search to understand ourselves and the world within us. God is truly present in schools throughout our world and in the large cities of our society He is present from the early stages of learning at our mother�s knee to the great post-graduate universities where, almost miraculously, more and more of His wonder is revealed; more and more of His beauty is unfolded.
God is present wherever art is found. Art and music and sculpture and beauty sketched out and molded and fashioned so that it may touch people�s hearts, warm their eyes and give them a touch of the infinite to which they can reach out through their senses, that beauty which ultimately leads to the beauty of the hidden God Himself. And so, God is present where there is art as He is present where there is science.
Wherever there is something beautiful, God is present. This means too that God is present in the beauties of nature, in the park where people may stop to inhale the pleasant fragrance of a new day, of a warm afternoon, of a quiet evening. God is present there because He is present everywhere and it is there in the oases that we find in the big cities of our society God�s presence here, He Who is truth and beauty and love and wonder. Wherever we find any of these, God is found and is found there, loving us and calling us into that beauty and into that truth and into that wonder.
Perhaps most of all, God is present in the poor and in those who reach out to them. All religions have known that the poor are God�s special people. All religions have called us to reach out to the poor, to help the poor, to encourage them on their journey to try to make their road smoother and less filled with burdens and obstacles. Perhaps this is the most tangible presence of the intangible spirit of God, that God is with the poor, that He knows their lives and touches their lives, that He inspires others to try to touch their lives as well.
The great Christian philosopher, St. Vincent de Paul, a Frenchman of the 17th century who founded Congregations of religious Sisters and priests, loved the poor with an intense and profound affection. He speaks of the poor as dearest friends and tells us in one place that the poor can be offended by our offering them alms and help, but he adds quickly that, if we do it with love, they will forgive us. What a beautiful thought this is and how it can encapsulate all we say about finding God in the major cities. It is in these cities where men and women help others who are less able than they to carry the burdens of the day because of poverty or age, because of illness or because of lack of education. We see God in the grace that He gives some to reach out to other human beings so that they may reach still others and make a difference in their lives. It is this special presence that is perhaps the most powerful of all and once one is able to touch the very roots of charity and goodness and care of one�s neighbor, there one can touch the very presence of God.
And so, as we try to discern the presence of God in the big cities, may we not say that we find Him in many places, not just in houses of worship or schools or hospitals, not just in those beautiful moments of rapture and love, but in a very special way in the times we reach out to those who need us, to forgive, to love, to help and to serve.
I recognize that this is a Christian belief because I have been taught it from my very youth. What I have learned over a long life is that it is not just a Christian notion, but something that is deeply found in the human nature of each one of us. It is by touching the lives of those who need us, it is by reaching out to help another rise from a painful or a humiliating or a challenging defeat, by rejoicing without envy at the triumph of a friend, that we show more than anything else that we understand God�s ways with us and God�s grace which fills us with the strength to be there for others.
In the Christian faith the notion of grace is very powerful. The saints have taught us that indeed everything is a grace and if this is true � and I believe it is � then we can truly see and understand the Presence of God in the towering masses of the great cities of our world, just as we sensed his presence in this awesome barrenness of the Arctic night, God is present in the solitude and He is present in the crowd. And perhaps, amid the struggles and the seeming chaos of the multitudes of the poor, God lets Himself be known even more clearly, for the more His children are gathered together to live in closeness with each other, the more they will recognize this common humanity which calls us all to reach out to our neighbor and challenges us to build a better world.
Thank you very much.
