The glory of institutional helplessness

“Anyone but the guy next door.”
A true story scenario, happening now.

An Orthodox Christian man, abandoned years previously by his wife but never divorced, somewhat handicapped, loses his subsidized housing, because he is unable to work at a regular job, and simply falls too far behind with his rent. A group of three or four members of his parish help him in this emergency. One offers to let him stay in a room at his nearly empty house—this man drives a new Mercedes—but has almost no personal contact with him, and after two months abruptly turns him out, because the room is needed for someone else. The other two or three parishioners help him retrieve some of his belongings from his subsidized apartment and let him store these possessions at their homes. When the man is turned out, he becomes homeless, has a few hopeful adventures in trying to find work and rent a modest place to stay, but eventually is turned out of the place he rented after two weeks, and ends up sleeping next to his bicycle tethered to an out-of-sight park bench.

He is an unusual man, his handicap making it difficult to help him through social agencies. He seems to “fall between the cracks” of the official guidelines. His parish priest gives up helping him, but he still is allowed to serve in the altar and at the chanter stand, where he is trying to learn to chant. Does his priest know he’s homeless? Honestly, I don’t know, but it’s hard to imagine that he doesn’t. Isn’t a priest supposed to be a pastor? Can it be that hard to know a member of your flock who comes to almost every religious service and serves with you as a helper in the altar?

So one day, this homeless Orthodox brother calls a friend and asks if he can come over for a visit. The friend knew that he is homeless, and had offered to let him stay the night, do his laundry, let him shower, and feed him, whatever was necessary, but he had never taken him up on the offer.

Well, this time, he comes to visit, and his friend simply cannot turn him out after helping him with his personal things, laundry, showering, and some supper. He asks him to stay the night and then attend liturgy together the next morning at a different parish. The friend is hoping to make some contacts that could him out of being homeless. This doesn’t happen quickly.

The friend cannot turn this Orthodox brother out and decides to just let him stay, since it costs him nothing, and there’s a sofa to sleep on, and starts looking for help. It’s difficult because the friend doesn’t know how to deal with the man’s handicaps.

About a week before he took in the homeless parishioner, he discovered an Orthodox Christian group on line that’s dedicated to helping the poor. “How timely!” he thinks to himself, and writes to the group, explaining the situation. “Here’s someone they can surely help, or at least advise me on what to do, especially because he’s not an ordinary poor man, but an Orthodox brother.”

He writes to a contact at FOCUS North America, and receives a reply almost immediately. The contact says she forwarded his email to two priests within the FOCUS organization, and that they should contact him soon.

A week goes by, and the friend has now taken the man in. He again writes his FOCUS contact to update her on that fact, and also to let her know that no priest has contacted him yet. She tells him that she will contact these two priests again.

Another week goes by, and the friend receives this email from the contact at FOCUS. “I have done everything in my power to get you in contact with a couple of priests. One of them finally responded to me and said he doesn't feel comfortable giving you advice because he lives so far away. Also, he said you probably already knew the advice he could give since he is not too familiar with dealing with individuals in [such] situations. The other priest never responded. There is nothing else that I can do. I will keep you [both] in my prayers. Sincerely sorry, [name withheld]”

“Well,” the friend thinks to himself, “I suppose they’re just not set up to deal with this kind of thing.” He isn’t angry that no one at FOCUS could help him, even with mere advice. What truly disappoints him, is that neither priest even responded directly. One says he is uncomfortable giving advice; the other doesn’t bother to respond at all. Even to have responded and said, “Sorry, I cannot help you,” would have helped, because there is more at stake here than helping even one person in trouble.

We are judged by the very Word we confess. Jesus says, “He who rejects Me and refuses My words has his judge already: the word itself that I have spoken will be his judge on the last day.”
(John 12:48 JB)

So I went and took a look at the FOCUS website. I watched a YouTube video there, in which FOCUS Chairman of the Board, Charles Ajalat, describes what FOCUS is. He ends his short sales pitch with these words, “If we can’t help the poor in this vineyard which God has placed us, we’re not really the Church anyway.”
This is absolutely verbatim, bad grammar and all, but still I wonder if it weren’t perhaps more than a Freudian slip that he says, “we’re not really the Church anyway.”