Dear Reader, Your critical role in this world is to touch the people you work with and the neighbors you with live near with the most important message they could ever receive. It is the message that Jesus loves them and wishes to save them. Priests and nuns cannot come into your workplace or in your neighborhood to give this message. Only you can do this. God calls you by virtue of your baptism to go out and evangelize the world. How can you do this? Well, St. Francis gave the best counsel I have ever heard; he said: "Preach the word of God; and if necessary use words." St. Francis knew that our example is the strongest way to preach that God loves us. If do not looked "redeemed" by our appearance, behavior and relationships, how can we tell anyone that Jesus can save them. You can preach sometimes the best by just smiling at a co-worker, by asking how they are doing. So, you have an impossible boss who possibly saddistic and cruel. Pray for him or her silently. When they treat you badly, do not retaliate. You can defend yourself yes, since when Jesus was struck on the mouth by the Temple guard, he said, "If I have spoken the truth, why do your strike me?" So, Jesus was no wimp. The guard did not know how to answer but realized that he struck Jesus out of a show of power and resentment - maybe even to please others in the court. You may have a boss who is trying to please his executives by high productivity or discipline. He may treat his workers as pawns for his own ends. I worked in industry for Ford Motor Company. I met such a boss one time. I was able to win his heart. Once a co-worker would always insult me on Monday mornings. He did this for more than a year. I finally told him boldly: "Al, insult people so that you can distance yourself from them so that you do not have to relate to them. You act like an ugly toad: but no matter how you act like an ugly toad to me, I will always love you." He was speechless. He became a best friend to me because I had understood him and did not retaliate. The very acts of unkindness he was doing habitiually became the very means to get close to him. Another man name Keith was a quiet guy. We had to do something very rare in our engineering office: we had to carry a large object. It took two people to carry it. We were carrying in down the hall when he all of sudden just dropped his end. I ask him what was wrong. He said: "You can carry it." I knew that Keith was manifesting a psychological behavior called "reaction formation" - an act of behavior that manifests the opposite of how we feel because the person does not feel comfortable with the way they really feel. So I said to Keith without hesitation: "Keith, your problem is that you really admire me but do not feel comfortable with admiring me; so you have to go way out of your way to show negativity to me." He immediately picked up his end and confirmed by suspicions by telling me: "At first I very suspicious that you would always eat lunch with the Black crowd. But now I know you were doing it because you like them and want to do good." So, he did admire me but was very uncomfortable with it because that made him feel there was something lacking in his social behavior. In those days, African-Americans eat by themselves - maybe because that made them comfortable; but I did not feel that kind of segregation was Christian. I also told Keith that I had lunch very often with one African American because he was the most intelligent and articulate man in the building. My philsophy too is that if we work together we can eat together and live together. "What Would Jesus Do" applies here. Besides, your very best friend may be Black. My spiritual director right now is Fr. Amah from Nigeria! He the best priest ever!
Some people will never read the Bible or the Gospels. You are the only Gospel they will ever read by observing your behavior? Your role is to bring Christ to your workplace, to your neighborhood, to your home, to your heart...........and to the world. That is why I am writing to you now! :) Love, Pio
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