Living Your Faith

These people show how its done:

Since it was a decidedly Catholic film, it was only fitting that the invited audience at the premiere of Thérèse should be the same. Sitting with actor/director Leonardo Defelippis in the New York theater were a bishop, some priests, local diocesan officials, Catholic activists, and a patchwork of religious men and women wearing full-length habits.

After the film, a line of limousines waited outside to take the invitees to a celebration of Defelippis's feat in a nearby establishment. Some of the habited guests seemed a little nervous about getting into the limos.

It was understandable, then, if a few of them felt relief when they arrived at the party and spotted a couple of homeless people outside the hotel. They weren't your typical city homeless: a young man and woman, shabbily dressed and in need of a barber, piercings all over. They sat on a flattened cardboard box, dragged on cigarettes and held up a piece of cardboard with a plea for food money. They were ignored by 99 percent of the New Yorkers hurrying by.

The other 1 percent consisted of men equally in need of a barber, wearing sandals, gray robes, and long beards. Members of the Community of Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, they squatted down to speak to these wanderers, engaging them in conversation to see what their needs were. A casual observer could catch snippets of the dialogue, which turned into a conversation about -- of all things -- the Church's teaching on chastity.

Some people do it.  Some people fake it.  Those who do it actually sit down with the lost and find out what they need and tell them what is true.  Those who fake it call for government spending.