An Explosive Dialogue Ensues
My skirmish with the Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Perpetual Help
“Even if your faith is only the size of a mustard seed... prayer can move mountains.”
I went to McDonald’s to eat burgers but was given humble pie instead... courtesy of two nuns who happened to dine in that particular branch on that fateful day. I seldom went downtown but had to during that week to take care of medical matters.
The Initial Approach
I saw the two nuns the minute I reached the digital order station. I thought, “Ah. They look different from the usual penguins, referring to the black-and-white uniforms of nuns stereotyped in Hollywood and mass media.
To the uninitiated, the correct term is “habit,” not “costume.” Their version was gray throughout, with just a white band around the headdress framing the face to break the monotony. I stopped thinking about them when my food arrived.
However, while I was enjoying my mushroom soup and Chicken à la king combo, something prompted me to reach out to them. At that moment, I realized that while I was in the middle of my meal, they were just having a snack and about to finish. If I didn’t approach them then, they might leave and I might miss my opportunity.
So I brought my tray over to their high table. I wondered why they had chosen to sit there when they weren’t tall and it was a challenge to clamber over the high chairs. Perhaps the restaurant was packed and there was nowhere else to sit before I arrived. Or, choosing a long, communal table was a deliberate move to “join the masses.” Nevertheless, I introduced myself and asked if I could pick their brains for a few minutes. They welcomed me with a very warm “Sure!”
The Discussion
I found out that they aren’t ordinary nuns—certainly not the kind hidden away in a convent up in the mountains. They are part of a religious order called The Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. Their work involves helping the poor hands-on, joining the masses regularly with their daily challenges.
Still, unfazed by the nobility of their purpose, I proceeded to rain upon them my rants about all the injustice in the world. What were they and their (religious) leaders doing about it? How could their God (who was also my God) permit such atrocities to happen to innocent people while allowing the evil ones to rule the world?
They responded with the typical “free will” principle: that God has given us free will allowing us to do whatever we like within the confines of society but we have to suffer the consequences of decisions that do more harm than good. They also gave the usual adage: “There is a reason for everything.” However, they also mentioned the more comforting “We are given trials to test our character and make us strong.”
Dismissing the Contemplatives
Next, I asked them why, even in the 21st century, their contemplative religious colleagues—brothers, priests, and nuns who took the vow of silence and/or chose a life of prayer and isolation—continue with their way of living instead of joining orders like theirs (missionaries) who help people hands-on in the real world?
I told them I sniffed at orders like the Carmelites (to which Saint Thérèse of Lisieux belonged... read about my shameful backtrack about her here) because they just pray and exist among their already “holy” selves. What good would that do when the world’s abominations exist beyond their gates and are persecuting the masses?
Shouldn’t they be helping the downtrodden out there? Shouldn’t they be taking in all the orphans abandoned by their parents who followed the Catholic Church’s ban on artificial methods of contraception? Shouldn’t they be aiding the poorest of the poor and healing the sick snubbed by, or whose magnitude overwhelmed the medical profession?
I believe the true test of a person’s character is being able to live among fellow humans—especially the selfish, inconsiderate, and unconscionable ones—without going berserk. Living away from them within the comfort of a convent or monastery—however austere—is, to me, not at all meritorious... regardless of whether or not they engage in prayer and manual labor all day. After all, we (regular folks, not the wealthy) have our share of daily domestic duties too.
The missionary nuns corrected me on this. They said I shouldn’t be too quick to dismiss the contemplative orders because they have a specific purpose: to pray for humanity and all the planet’s inhabitants along with the misery and problems that accompany them. Prayer shouldn’t be taken lightly because it works! As the Bible says (paraphrased): “Even if your faith is only the size of a mustard seed... prayer can move mountains.”
Said one missionary nun, “Contemplatives—like the Carmelites—are the cornerstone of the Church. Their work (praying) is what makes our work (reach-out initiatives) possible. We depend on them to carry out our mission.”
Afterward, when I was researching the life of Saint Thérèse, I found out that she admitted she didn’t help the masses or the missions face-to-face, but she did what she could to be holy every day despite living a mundane, ordinary life. Church leaders called her system “The Little Way,” a method of doing good and upholding God even if it was difficult or if one “didn’t feel like it.” She also indoctrinated novices (nun trainees) into her religious community.
I learned that she did help the missionaries by praying for them, contributing to their activities remotely and in kind, and sending them letters of comfort to encourage them to continue their work.
Poverty and Homelessness
The missionary sisters and I then exchanged observations about the urban poor, plus the challenges in helping them. And to a greater extent ask, “Was there an effective way to eradicate poverty and homelessness?”
I told them how I previously blamed the local government for not doing enough to alleviate their plight. But after researching the matter, I found that there were lots of federal and provincial programs to aid the impoverished. So where do the problems lie?
The nuns said there were many factors contributing to the destitute not getting assistance. These are a few of them:
1) Many urban and rural indigents do not know that such initiatives to help them exist. Groups and individuals giving aid in developing countries should consider that not everyone has access to TV, radio, and social media despite the proliferation of smartphone ownership by the populace. Many may have access to mobile devices (owned, borrowed, gifted, or stolen) but do not have the money to buy load/credits to access the internet and other forms of mobile communication (text and call).
2) Many street people are undocumented, especially the ones from far-flung provinces or those abandoned or kicked out of their homes by family due to drug addiction or mental health disorders. All government aid programs require documentation, eg, birth certificate, “valid” ID, social security number, proof of residence, a working telephone number, and suchlike.
Anyone needing welfare benefits but cannot show any of these cannot be helped. This is just one instance of the red tape surrounding access to social services. You’d think this problem doesn’t exist in developed nations, but it does. (Except maybe Scandinavian countries.)
Apart from the above mentioned, this is due to several factors:
The ID-less individual may be in trouble with the law, so she will avoid any government agency. She may also be wary of charities, fearing they may “turn her in.”
Children and teens fleeing a violent home with their identification documents left behind in a hurry don’t want to be shuttled back to their abusive parents.
Illegal immigrants cannot request aid from a government that does not want them in the first place.
People who lost all their belongings due to fire, natural disasters, or war
Veterans suffering from PTSD or other mental health disorders
Victims of human trafficking and the sex slave trade
Language barriers
Elderly people born in an era when ID wasn’t a requisite
Former slaves and immigrants who never had identification documents when they entered their host countries and never bothered to secure them
People living in remote areas where social services and telecommunications are inaccessible
3) The government provides free or subsidized housing to certain sectors. The problem is, most of the urban poor refuse these handouts because they are typically located outside the metropolitan areas—where jobs are scarce. If they do live in these suburban or industrial areas and commute into the city to work, the transport expense alone is a dealbreaker.
Free housing in out-of-the-way locations is intentional. The reasons? One, the government wants to relocate multitudes away from cities to address urban overcrowding. Two, it is a move toward eradicating the shanty (illegal settlement) problem.
Another challenge is that some homeless families sell their free houses at a profit, then spend the proceeds on debt payment or buying necessities—or even small luxuries they previously couldn’t afford but suddenly have access to. The result: they quickly run out of money then go back to being homeless.
Similarly, some of the mobility challenged who receive free wheelchairs sell them immediately afterward, leaving them without aids to cope with their disabilities. So if we consider the above circumstances, we cannot really blame aid providers when they fall short in their efforts to assist.
Possible Remedies
Solution to #1: The methods of information dissemination should be improved. Considering the impoverished’s difficulty in accessing mass media, one option could be community outreach—which the missionary nuns do regularly. They visit the most indigent neighborhoods and remote provinces on foot and interact with the residents one-to-one or at a community gathering. As the nuns said, “If people won’t come to you, go to them.”
In religious nations, announcements can also be given during church, mosque, synagogue, shrine, or temple services, as the majority of the populace attend these.
One can also use good old advertising billboards for announcements. Furthermore, aid groups and charities can post information about events and giveaways on notice boards in libraries, community centers, public schools, and neighborhood leisure centers/gyms where people post physical ads. Think: low-tech Craigslist, offline Facebook page, or Instagram reel on paper.
Mass email or crowd text messaging can also be used, but this requires funding. Those without access to phones or telecoms signals will, of course, be excluded from receiving information.
Staff from the lowest level of government (for example, the “barangay” in the Philippines) could announce—by word of mouth (or via a megaphone from a van going around neighborhoods)—events like pop-up medical and dental clinics or vitamin freebies. This was how the Philippine government disseminated vaccine information and cash aid to depressed areas during the pandemic-related lockdowns.
Solution to #2: Mobile or pop-up ID-generating kiosks. We know there should be a more attractive term for this to reassure the indigent that the initiative would benefit them and isn’t a game plan for Big Brother to grab their personal information. We’re open to suggestions. These should be located in areas where street people congregate, like parks, homeless shelters, soup kitchens, Salvation Army chapters, under bridges, abandoned parking lots, walkways between malls, social service offices, unemployment centers/job clubs,YMCA/YWCA branches, or in front of 7-11 stores.
The Philippine government recently came up with a unified ID scheme, to which many sectors, like the literati and activists, were averse due to certain concerns, such as potential privacy breaches or a forced move toward totalitarianism. However, if one looks at this initiative from a different angle, it can actually solve problem #2 because the efforts toward getting the entire populace under the universal ID system are tenacious and far-reaching.
Solution to #3: Make it illegal to sell complimentary or subsidized housing and any asset received from religious organizations, charities, philanthropists, or the government. The penalty can be financial, legal prosecution, or exclusion from further free aid or social services. Or give the owners a set period to maintain ownership (like five years) before they can sell their acquired properties.
As for gift wheelchairs, providers can mark them with invisible ink, so stolen or illegally sold ones can be traceable. Or write a warning on the steel parts of each unit with a permanent marker. Something like “Those caught buying or stealing this chair will be legally prosecuted.”
The Significance of McDonald’s
The women I had a dialogue with were missionary nuns. Why did God allow us to meet in such an undignified, inappropriate venue? Why not a cathedral? Or a monastery, retreat home, meditative garden, UN satellite office, Y(M/W)CA chapter, or even a soup kitchen? Why, of all places, did we find each other in the most glaring of all icons of capitalist greed?
My guess: there are two sides to the proverbial coin. The McDonald‘s fast food chain isn’t just symbolic of capitalism, global addiction to fast food, or the supposed decline of nutrition and culinary values in North American society. It has a charitable side too. One of the McDonald’s Corporation’s civic incentives is the Ronald McDonald House, which has 690-plus programs and is present in 62 countries.
The McDonald’s Foundation provides residential structures near hospitals—and also family rooms inside medical centers—as temporary housing for seriously ill children and their family members who live a great distance, so they wouldn’t have to travel far to keep the kids’ medical appointments. The foundation also has 40-plus Ronald McDonald Care Mobile Programs, which offer medical and dental resources to underserved communities in the USA. These initiatives are run by more than 152,000 volunteers.
The McDonald’s branch I accidentally discovered was near a public hospital and a cathedral. The surrounding area was typical of the downtown core of a city in a developing country: a chaotic environment, busy traffic, scattered low-income housing interspersed with micro and medium business establishments, an unsanitary wet market, and street people in every corner.
The hospital and the church are two venues where the poverty-stricken should be able to get help. There were also a couple of government-sponsored town centers nearby, specifically built to address civic and medical needs. Yet why are there still so many people living on the streets? It means that these establishments meant to do good aren’t effective. What should be done? What can ordinary people do to help? This was one of the topics we discussed at the McDonald’s table.
Takeaway
Despite having been “put in my place” by these two missionary nuns, I didn’t feel reprimanded at all, nor shamed. I simply accepted that I held the kind of thinking most well-meaning folks also believe in but acknowledged I was wrong in some areas. When the nuns explained their side, it was with love and empathy, not with reprimand or sermon. I never felt like I was being told off. I now have a greater understanding of why some issues, such as poverty and homelessness, are the way they are and these conditions might have existed even after Adam and Eve fled the Garden of Eden.
These problems are not easy to solve. If the world’s superpowers could not eradicate poverty and homelessness within their shores, what more regular folks like us?
It just boggles the mind, though, how the leaders of these nations could afford to send billion-dollar weaponry to aid in proxy wars when they couldn’t even provide for their own homeless. What are the sources of these funds? Those massive amounts could eliminate homelessness in a few developing countries! Any nation with so much wealth that goes into funding external conflict instead of its poor does not have the right to call itself “great” or “the greatest in the world.”
You Are Not a Superhero!
I had once been told by a parish priest from a church in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, not to bear the scourge of humanity on my shoulders. “Why get stressed about the good work you cannot do then get angry with friends and colleagues when they’re unable to help you? You cannot solve all the world’s problems! I certainly can’t! So just do what you can with the resources you have.”
Similarly, these missionary nuns of Our Lady of Perpetual Help told me, “We cannot expect to help everyone at the same time. It isn’t humanly possible. Instead, help one person at a time. Start with the ones you meet every day—even if it’s just giving food to a street person. That in itself is a big deal. You won’t see the benefits right away but that single act can be the catalyst that could lead to other positive things... and even start a movement.”
God is telling me the same thing over and over because I don’t listen. And he’s using different people to deliver the message. In between the priest and the two nuns at McDonald’s, the mother of GMBF, a member of the Solace Team, told me on her deathbed: “You cannot save everyone. Focus on one family at a time. That is enough.”
This repeated advice finally resonated with me when I met the two missionary sisters. It reminded of a real-life event turned into a movie that kickstarted the “Pay It Forward” initiative.
A single, random act of kindness spawned that global movement. Who knew this opinionated heretic could be silenced by two nuns? And at McDonald’s too!
In the end, the nuns and I settled on a virtual handshake because, despite our contrasting opinions, we really were on the same side.
Do you have practical, feasible, realistic enough-to-implement solutions to poverty and homelessness? If so, we would like to hear from you. If you would rather present other comments on this article—or give constructive criticism, make suggestions, share your story, or be a contributor to our blog, please do so using this contact form. We keep our readers’ information private. Thank you in advance for your contribution.
Expat Scribe, the writer of this article, is also the author of the psychological techno-thriller, “The Invisible Cyber Bully: What it’s like to be watched 24/7.”
The novel tackles the surreptitious bullying and illegal surveillance, DNA-extraction, psychological torture of, and experimentation on ordinary citizens by law enforcers, scientific laboratories, various “hidden” associations, and global authorities. Some chapters discuss the garden-variety bully from schools and neighborhoods. The book also features a primer on how to fight cyber bullying.
Sources:
Photo and Video Credits:
Versus video: Oleg Gamulinskii
Cute monster in Versus video: Alexas Fotos
What It’s Like martial arts video: Rodnae Productions
Two-nun cutout: Ricardo Gomez
Church surrounded by lavender: Adobe Express collection
McDonald’s burger and fries: Polina Tankilevitch
Nuns in a garden: Therese Huyen
Bible, rosary, candles: Mikhail Nilov
Lake house in the mountains: David Mark
St. Thérèse statue: Nick Castelli
Homeless: QK at Islandworks
Red tape: Maky Orel
Wheelchair graphic: Alberto H. Fabregas
Countryside: Adobe Express collection
Bullhorn: Pressmaster
Driving license: Dom J
McDonald’s from a windshield: Sebastiaan Stam
Ronald McDonald in chalk: Abenteuer Albanien
War zone: Alexas Fotos
Superhero: Alan9187
Handshake: Savvas Stavrinos
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