saint of the week

St. Fidelis

 

Last Saturday was a chilly but tolerable Spring day so I did what any self respecting mother would do. . . I made my family go out and pick up litter.  I was tired of looking at the garbage instead of the trees.

We live in a northern suburb of Pittsburgh.  When we moved here, the area was quite rural, but now it has succumbed to urban sprawl.  With the growth in population there is of course more traffic.  Sadly with the traffic comes more litter.  Unfortunately the litter thrown on the roadway leading to our house will, with a moderate to heavy rain, wash right down into Little Deer Creek.  This creek is one of the best trout streams in Western Pa.  It also feeds directly into the Alleghe ny River.

 

Within 15 minutes my husband and I were able to fill a Hefty trash bag. At least 80% of what we picked up could have been recycled.  Most of it was plastic bottles.  Within 45 minutes we filled three bags. I probably should have brought two more for my complaining kids who were surely teetering on the edge of life.  They were resuscitated from their "Mom, I'm dying" state however, when they found a pair of underwear along the road.  Who knew that giggling could be as effective as CPR?

 

At one point I looked at my family and said, "I am afraid that our planet is doomed.  How do we hope to stop global warming when we can't even get people to stop littering?"

 

After about an hour we went home.  Starting near the mid point of the road, we cleaned about ¼ of the road in that time.  Needless to say the walking dead do not work very fast.  I sighed and thought about all that there was to do. It seemed almost insurmountable. We made a plan to finish piece by piece over the next warm days.

 

That evening on our way to mass I saw someone at the beginning of the road, picking up litter.  Sunday evening when I was on my way to work I drove along that same windy road and saw hefty bag after hefty bag.  The entire road was clean.

 

St. Fidelis was born in Germany in 1578.  His actual name is Mark Rey.  He became a lawyer.  More often than not, he took cases representing the poor; so many that he became known as the 'poor man's lawyer'.  Eventually he became disgusted with the dishonesty of the courts and became a priest.  He changed his name to Fidelis, which means faithful.  Fr. Fidelis was assigned to Switzerland, where, at the time, there were many enemies of the church. He was happy to go some place where his work would make a differen ce. Indeed, his faith filled preaching brought many people back to the church.  He was quite successful.  With success however, often come enemies.  So it was with Fr. Fidelis. After narrowly missing being shot, he decided to leave to town for a while until things cooled down.  As we was walking, He was attacked and beaten to death.  It is said that his final words were, "Lord, forgive my enemies. They do not know what they are doing. Lord Jesus, have mercy on me! Holy Mary, my Mother, help me."

 

How often do you see something that could make a positive difference but stop short, because you are afraid of getting your hands dirty?  There's a line from a song by Keb Mo that says, "Everyone wants a party but no one wants to clean."  Fact is there's a hefty bag waiting for all of us.   

 

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"All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well". St. Julian of Norwich


Jamie Dillon