The old man and the scorpion

There's a parable told about an old man who used to meditate each day be the Ganges River in India. 

One morning he saw a scorpion floating on the water. When the scorpion drifted near the old man he reached to rescue it but was stung by the scorpion. A bit later he tried again and was stung again, the bite swelling his hand painfully and giving him much pain. 

Another man passing by saw what was happening and yelled at the mediator, "Hey, stupid old man, what's wrong with you? Only a fool would risk his life for sake of an ugly, evil creature. Don't you know you could kill yourself trying to save that ungrateful scorpion?" 

The old man calmly replied, "My friend, just because it is in the scorpion's nature to sting, does not change my nature to save." 

It is in God's nature to save (Luke 15:1-10)

Prayer of the Despised

Today we come to you, Lord, we, the despised. We are not a sorry procession, but a repugnant one. We do not even arouse compassion or hatred, tenderness or sympathy. We are simply despised; we disgust people. The leper arouses compassion. The fiercest criminal stirs up hatred or terror. The mentally ill or the retarded inspire pity or protectiveness. But there is no place reserved for us in the catalogue of the works of mercy.

I, Lord, am a drug addict; for all practical purposes, I have resigned from the human race, I have lost all hope of regaining my self-control, of becoming myself again. There are other people who have drugged, not their bodies, but their consciences and hearts. But nobody despises them. At worst, they are feared.

I, Lord, am a homosexual. I don’t like women. Now and then, I go with another man. I commit fewer sins than my brother who certainly does like women and who even takes up with other men’s wives. But no one at home or outside turns their nose up at him; they don’t find him repugnant; on the contrary, sometimes they even admire him. But everyone, both men and women, shy away from me. And I am acceptable only to someone who, like me, also feels that he has been cast off by normal society.

I, Lord, am a drunkard, but a poor one. I’ve been on the bottle for many years. They don’t want me at home because they’re ashamed of me, and so I’m left to stagger around the streets like a sick dog. When people see me coming, they hastily cross to the other side of the street. Even a beggar occasionally has the consolation of having someone approach him and although hurriedly, put a small coin in his hand. But nobody comes near me; except perhaps a policeman to hustle me off to jail.
Yet, Lord, there are others who also get drunk, but they do it at exclusive parties in the suburbs and, because they are influential, people only laugh good-naturedly at their drunken antics. They are readily forgiven and, if necessary, excuses are found for them by their hangers-on, who cover up for them. No policeman ever lays a finger on them. I wonder-am I more repugnant when drunk than they are, just because I get loaded on cheap wine, while they do it on expensive whiskey, vodka, and gin.

I, Lord, am a prostitute. I can’t claim to be one of the girls, not any more. Because now I’m old and fat and tired. I have no one now to pay the rent of an apartment for me and buy me nice things. I am one of those who have to be satisfied with what my “customers” feel like giving them. I no longer have a nice apartment to entertain my clients in, and I don’t have money to advertise in the newspapers as a “masseuse”. I have to be satisfied with hanging around cheap bars in the slums or street corners in the cold and rain, hoping some poor wretch will be willing to pay me a few coins for the remnants of my favors. People passing in their cars look down their noses at me and quickly turn away so as not to meet my eyes. I am despised even by the high class call girls who, glittering with jewels and wrapped in furs, glide by in big cars driven by their so-very-respectable “patrons”.

We and so many others whom society does not even pity; we the despised of the earth, who arouse neither hatred nor pity nor fear, but only disgust, today we come to you, who are sinless, because we believe that, if you do exist, you will not despise but will even forgive us.

We aren’t trying to hide or to make excuses for the sins that have caused us to be cast off by society. We only hope that perhaps you, who not only forgive, but also excuse, will be able to avoid humiliating us further and to tell us, as once you told a man possessed by the devil, that saving us will let others see your glory and mercy in us.

Remember, you said you came to save what is lost. And who is more lost than we who do not even arouse pity? Sometimes a ray of hope lets us dream for a moment that perhaps you may bring yourself to love even us.

- Father Juan Arias

There’s a wideness in God's mercy

There’s a wideness in God's mercy
Like the wideness of the sea;
There's a kindness in God's justice
Which is more than liberty.

There is grace enough for thousands
Of new worlds as great as this;
There is room for fresh creations
In that upper home of bliss.

For the love of God is broader
Than the measures of our mind;
And the heart of the Eternal
Is most wonderfully kind.

But we make God's love to narrow
By false limits of our own;
And we magnify God's strictness
With a zeal God will not own.

If our love were but more simple
We should take God at God's word;
And our lives would be illumined
By the presence of our Lord.

From: Frederick William Faber (1814-63) alt.