By Kim Michael
He was late. Jim had been in meetings all morning and his last meeting at the main campus of the hospital ran over, putting him on a dead run back to his office six blocks away.
Now I have to preface this story by telling you that the Jim in this story is a friend of mine, a gentle giant. Maybe six seven or eight. When I first met him, he probably weighed close to three hundred pounds, but not an “obese” three hundred pounds, a “big” three hundred pounds–like a line-backer. Add to that that he’d once been a state trooper in Maine until he got the highest grade on a civil service exam in Massachusetts which landed him a job in hospital administration, which he freely admits he had absolutely no background in. And yet, in a few short years, he had become one of the most highly respected patient accounts directors in the state– and now he is terribly late for his next meeting–an important meeting that he can’t miss.
It was almost noon when he finally parked his car in the parking deck, rushed down the stairs to the sidewalk below, and then across the street to the ten story office complex where his office was located.
That’s when Jim sees the homeless man sitting on the curb. He glances at him for only a second as he passes, but before he pushes through the office building door, he pauses to see his own reflection in the glass…and then he sees the homeless man sitting on the curb in the same reflection and in the back of his mind he remembers the words “Unto the least of these…”
Then he looks down at his watch. He’s late. He knows it, but suddenly it doesn’t matter. He slowly turns back to the sidewalk. He pauses again looking at the homeless man sitting on the curb as people pass by as if not even seeing him. But instead of going to his meeting, Jim walks across the street to a restaurant and buys two sandwiches. And then on that warm summer afternoon, in his suite and tie, Jim comes back to where the homeless man is sitting, sits down on the curb beside him, and hands him one of the sandwiches.
The homeless man’s name was Joseph. Jim never told me his last name, and I suspect he didn’t know it himself. He didn’t have to. He knew everything he needed to know. They just sat there on the curb and watched the cars pass by, people streaming around them as they went off to lunch and coming back.
And I suspect in all the time they sat there, Joseph never knew that the man who had bought him a sandwich, was also a Catholic Ordained Permanent Deacon of St. Anna Parish, which is much like being a priest to most of us.
It was’t important for Jim to tell him and it wasn’t important for Joseph to know. Sometimes the only thing that really matters is just sitting on a curb and eating a sandwich with someone who needs a sandwich…even when you’re late.
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