In the last post, the priest notes that our societies throughout the world are saturated with sin these days, and God may have allowed (not that He directly caused it) a virus to let us know in the physical, at least some of how sick we have become spiritually. And yeah, abortion, gay sex, transgenderism, cloning… All pretty obvious spiritual sickness — that is if you’re reading the Bible, or Catholic Church teaching, or a combination thereof. But what else? Here’s one. Those of us in small town and suburban America, are leaving little kids abandoned, and their parents trapped in transgenerational poverty loops, in, as an example, American inner cities. These inner cities are now blighted war zones. Meanwhile all of us outside those inner cities, stay relatively comfortable, relatively safe, without virtually a second thought about these people. This is a huge sin of omission, and a huge sin of indifference! For five years, our family moved to a hardscrabble area of Cleveland to live among these abandoned people and to volunteer at an outreach to help them. And the poverty was palpable and the danger level was off the charts. (There were two homicides on our block in a four month period, as an example.) So, on the “repent” front. Is it enough to raise up a few “Alleluia, forgive me Jesuses!” And think everything’s then going to be alright? Or do we look, as just one example, at this inner city abandonment thing squarely in the eye, repent and: THEN MAKE IT RIGHT! Our campaign platform calls for nothing less than a Marshall Plan to rebuild and revitalize our inner cities. But more. It also calls for, through a series of creative urban development neighborhood designs and incentives, for some more well healed people to move back into our inner cities to live and help in solidarity, coupled with a tremendously proactive twinning of suburban and inner city churches, and so on. Luke 11:5 Jesus tells the story of a neighbor who comes to a friend’s house, says he needs some bread, and the friend smiles and says something like: “God bless ya buddy and have a good night.” But, oh yeah one thing. He doesn’t give the guy any bread. Uh… And it’s the same here. We know, really know, that these people in these inner cities need all kinds of significant help, and many of us bow our heads in suburban and small town church services during the prayer intentions, and pray: “Lord, please help the poor in our cities.” Then, well, we do nothing, or virtually nothing to really help. This is called being “spiritually sick.” Just like people, again, are getting ‘sick’ from the coronavirus. Time to wake up!