A wonderful grace of my Jesuit vocation was my time ministering in downtown Kingston, Jamaica. I served for a total of six years as novice, scholastic, and priest. Having grown up in a middle-class New England suburb, I was shocked on arriving in Kingston as a novice to see the living conditions. It was so loud and cramped compared to those to which I was accustomed, yet these conditions are actually the norm for most of the world’s population. My first month was a sad one, as I struggled to make sense of the material disparities of our world. Soon, however, I came to a second realization: the children around me, running barefoot in the street, were FULL of life; so full, they
began filling me with new life. Beginning with the children, I began seeing God at work in countless ways. For these people, God is not only a presence but the true provider of what they need. I saw as well the daily miracles of charitable giving by those who have so little like our church member; the single man, who passed by an unwanted two-year-old thrown out into the street, spontaneously took in and adopted the boy whose eyes were pleading, “PLEASE—I want to live!” Blessed are you poor…. (Lk 6:20) Fr. Tom