what it means to be human

So many times I'm thinking about something and I come across an article or hear something on the radio, maybe engage in a conversation, that is exactly about the topic I've been thinking about. It may be a coincidence but it happens a lot when I read a scripture passage and then attend mass on Sunday and that's the reading for the week. Today it comes courtesy of the on-line version of First Things. I've included a snippet from the article here and encourage you to visit the site to read the rest. It's well worth it.

The article is about Grassroots Film’s latest documentary, The Human Experience
_______________________________________________
Then there are glimpses of grotesque suffering and nearly unbearable anguish: a man riddled with leprosy, flies feeding off the rotting flesh of his rag-wrapped feet. “We are happy about the community,” he tells Jeff and Clifford, struggling to explain the inexplicable: the problem of, and answer to, pain. True, in the leper colony there are others who understand and share his suffering, but that isn’t enough. He, in return, is able to understand them, to give them strength by returning their compassion. And he is able to look on the healthy faces of Jeff and Clifford without resentment, but with love: “We are all the same. You are my brother.”

The dialogue trips and stumbles, at times, but there’s something very real about that. The Azize brothers are not actors, visiting exotic places for a nice and moving show. They are residents of St. Francis House for young men in Brooklyn, founded in 1967 by Fr. Benedict Groeschel, C.F.R. Now the home is operated by Joseph Campo, who trains many of the residents in film technology while drawing from their firsthand knowledge of street life and the MTV generation. “Some call it a halfway house or a group home,” says Jeff. “We just call it home.”

The residents—so-called throwaway children—come from broken and abusive families, and most say that they would be on the streets, in prison, or dead were it not for this second chance. “I was a surprise baby,” Jeff explains, groping for words. “I wasn’t intended, you know, I wasn’t planned.” And so when he encounters the unquestioning fellowship of the New York homeless, the joyful resilience of the abused Peruvian children, the familial love of the African leper colony, the experience is haunting, and hauntingly beautiful. Paradoxically, the people who have the least give the most. What they give is not ideas and ideals, but living answers to what it means to be human.