On Friday 6 July, we went were among the urban poor in Seoul. We visited both a soup kitchen and St Joseph’s clinic to serve those who are marginalised by society.
Throughout the day I could feel God’s presence. He was everywhere. He was in the people we served meals at St Tomas’ soup kitchen and those we met when we went door to door to give food.
God was also in the volunteers and workers who served others with tenderness, compassion, and love.
Though poverty is persistent, as it is in Korea and the rest of the world, we too are persistent as a Church in sowing God’s love.
Not all of us could speak the Korean language, but we demonstrated through our actions that the poor were not forgotten or abandoned. However big these social problems may be, our faith is bigger.
At the end of the day, I was reminded of a prayer attributed to Bl Oscar Romero.
It states, “We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realising that. This enables us to do something and to do it well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity to for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.”
Victoria Ciudad-Real (USA)
