Now, years later, I have come to see that giving my life away and living life to the full are not two separate realities conflicting with each other.

In fact, when it comes to being fully alive, I believe that, as a man, I will not fully receive, embrace, and live my own life if I am not in some concrete way, with my very flesh and blood, connected to the life of men, women, and children everywhere.

As a matter of fact, if I lose sight of solidarity with people around the world, I kind of shrivel and dry up, and soon all I can see before me is me with my needs and my wants and my life. Self-centeredness, perhaps our greatest enemy, is never far away.

I can now see that a very real way of giving my life away is to keep individual people before my mind’s eye and, in some fashion, open myself up to what they are living and make it a part of me—taking in their story and sharing the burden and the joy.

So I find myself working hard in the fields at the Madonna House farm on a sweltering day. Bugs are swarming around me and the work is tedious. I am bored and exhausted.

All of a sudden, it’s as if I am not alone. A man from South America stands before my mind’s eye. He is toiling on the land under the scorching sun, his hands and legs bleeding from cuts from the thorns he is weeding in the bean field. At the end of his twelve-hour day, he will have made just enough money for his family’s next meal.

He has no idea how he will ever be able to afford the medicine the doctor ordered for his wife suddenly struck with illness. And what of his three children who are too young to take care of themselves?

Somehow, this man gives me courage and I find myself carrying him for the rest of the day, not minding the tiredness and the boredom anymore.

I am sent to do a job I can’t stand. It is really killing me to do it.

Suddenly, a young mother and her six-year-old daughter from a small town in Indonesia are before me.

They have been up since before sunrise and have walked seven miles to the sweatshop where she got hired five months ago, after her husband kicked them out on the street.

There, she bears the searing pain of seeing her daughter roughed around, and the girl, that of seeing her mother abused. But they can’t protest.

The days are long, often cruel, and the pay is barely enough for rent and rice. Tomorrow, they will do it all over again. And the next day… And the next… And the next…

Now, for their sake, I want to do that job and from within me wells up a lightness of heart and a joy that light up the whole place.

There are endless examples, countless stories. Each has a human face.

Pope Benedict wrote in Spe Salvi, his encyclical on hope: "Our lives are involved with one another; through innumerable interactions they are linked together. No one lives alone. No one sins alone. No one is saved alone.

"The lives of others continually spill over into mine: in what I think, say, do and achieve. And conversely, my life spills over into that of others: for better and for worse."

March 3, 2008—Middle East: After 5 days of Israeli attacks against Palestinian fighters in the Gaza Strip, more than a hundred Palestinians, including civilians, and three Israelis have been killed. The operation is in retaliation to Palestinian attacks on Israel. In the meantime, the Gaza Strip faces the worst humanitarian crisis in forty years.

Meanwhile at Madonna House I blew up at my dorm mate about an opened window. I just told him that if he wants me to close the window at night, he will have to stop snoring.

January 29, 2008—Kenya, Africa: Hundreds have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced by revenge and reprisal attacks.

In Madonna House: Hey! The dishwasher in not working. Oh, no! The power just went out and we are not prepared! I have an urgent e-mail to send, and we’re waiting for a critical fax! What do you mean there is something wrong with the generator and we can’t run water?

May 2, 2008—East Asia: A powerful cyclone devastates southern Myanmar. The estimated death toll is over 100,000 people and 2.4 million are without food, water, or shelter.

Another time at the workplace in Madonna House: After months of struggle, animosity between two staff workers in a department is escalating. Fear and resentment have become unbearable. The fighting continues with no reconciliation in sight.

Both parties have attempted negotiations with their directors, venting and rambling about the faults of the other. The animosity has set the whole department on edge.

May 21, 2008—Africa: A wave of attacks against foreigners in South Africa has left at least 42 people dead and displaced an estimated 20,000. The immigrants are accused of stealing jobs, undercutting wages, and of being criminals.

I’m sure you could find examples in your own life. For, believe it or not, what happens on the global scene is also happening in our own lives, in our homes and work places.

If I want to, I can let the global realities challenge me and raise me to greater love. And in my own little way, I can make of my daily events, struggles, and pains, however small and unimportant they may appear to be, a prayer for hope for those stripped of hope.

This is not just "I wish you well, keep yourself warm and eat plenty." It is something I take on and experience in my own flesh, together with the ones for whom I pray. This is solidarity.

St. Thomas Aquinas once wrote: "How is it they live for eons in such harmony—the billions of stars—when most men can barely go a minute without declaring war in their minds against someone they know. There are wars where no one marches with a flag, though that does not keep casualties from mounting."

At the last meetings of the local directors of Madonna House, Elizabeth Bassarear said something quite fitting for what we are talking about here. It is a very good example of how we can touch the global reality through our daily experience.

She said: "Some of the rationale behind euthanasia is that the medical costs are too high, the care too great a burden, and the fact that the person’s medical problems can’t be fixed.

"Although we really don’t want to kill each other, when it costs too much to love, when the other is too much of a burden, and when the person can’t be ‘fixed,’ we very easily would like him or her out of our life!

"If I can recognize in myself when I want you out of my life for all those reasons, and choose to keep on loving you anyhow; this is a powerful, powerful prayer!"

Am I really concerned with peace, justice, and unity in the Middle East and the world? Then I have to stop declaring war against you in my own mind, and fight instead in my heart to love and serve you here and now—my dorm-mate, my brother, my family, my co-worker, whatever person God has put in my life.

I have to fall on my knees before the Lord, over and over and over, begging for grace and mercy. And before you, begging forgiveness over and over. But I won’t be alone! I will be falling before the Lord with and for all those who, like me, don’t seem to manage to love their neighbour very well. One with them, my own prayer for mercy is a global cry to the Lord.

I’d like to end with an excerpt from a fourteenth century Persian poet, Hafiz:

I have come into this world to see this:/ the sword drop from men’s hands even at the height / of their arc of anger / because we have finally realized / there is just one flesh to wound / and it is His—the Christ’s, our Beloved’s.