Social Concerns Column for Sunday, February 19, 2012

He who shuts his ear to the cry of the poor will himself also call and not be heard.
Proverbs 21:13

Collection for Livermore Homeless Refuge, February 25-26. 
Please put your donations in the boxes located at the entrances to the church.  We need coffee, hot chocolate, cups, plastic forks/spoons/knives, paper plates / bowls, napkins, underwear and socks (men’s and women’s), generic gift cards, toilet paper cleaning supplies, blankets and sleeping bags, etc.  When you are out doing your usual shopping, why not buy one more item for the homeless?  For more information, call Bob and Donna McKenzie, 925-443-7389 or 925-895-4167.

The Stations of the Cross Around the World with Catholic Relief Services (CRS). 
Station 2 Jesus carries the cross.  In rural El Salvador, women and children walk for hours each day to the river to retrieve and carry water that will be used for cooking, bathing and drinking.  When CRS helped build a well in rural El Salvador, 130 families in El Pedregal gained access to clean water in their homes.
http://orb.crs.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/ORB-2012-Stations-of-the-Cross.pdf

Catholic Social Teaching: RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES.
We must take responsibility to protect the rights of all people. These rights include the right to life, food, water, shelter, education, and employment, along with political and cultural rights.

Pope on Justice, Life, Truth. 
“America first proclaimed its independence on the basis of self-evident moral truths. America will remain a beacon of freedom for the world as long as it stands by those moral truths which are the very heart of its historical experience.  And so America: If you want peace, work for justice. If you want justice, defend life. It you want life, embrace the truth, the truth revealed by God."  -- Pope John Paul II, St. Louis, Missouri, January 1999

First Fridays for Food Security. 
For the past ten months, Catholics in the U.S. have been fasting on First Fridays in solidarity with persons living in poverty in the U.S.  Your challenge: feed your family for the entire day with about $5 per person.  You will likely go hungry, so this is a great discipline for Lent.  Learn more at: http://tinyurl.com/FirstFridayFast2012

Would you like to pursue a social justice project?
The St. Michael Parish Social Concerns Ministry would like to help you to help others!  Call Joanne, 443-1422.

You have been told, what is good, and what the LORD requires of you: Only to do the right and to love goodness, and to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8