Sitting at poolside should mean no one underwater

What does it feel like at the bottom?

When I was little, we sometimes played a game in the local swimming pool to see who could stay under water the longest. It was best to stay all the way at the bottom.

It was colder there, and darker. And very, very quiet. It was also a little scary because you knew that it wasn't the best place for you to be for too long.

Down there at the bottom, you could see -- in a murky way -- everything that was good for you -- air, light, other people -- way up there, out of reach.

And then -- and this is what made it more fun than scary -- you could push off the bottom and burst up into that air and light and safety. And then we'd laugh.

But what would have happened if we'd stayed on the bottom?

Pool of life

The poor are those on the bottom of the pool of life. In exploring the stewardship of service, our diocese calls us to look at both scripture and Catholic social teaching and find several recurrent themes. One of these is "the option for the poor." As Pope John Paul II reminded us in his 1987 social encyclical Solicitudo Rei Socialis, "to ignore (the poor) would mean becoming like the 'rich man' who pretended not to know the beggar Lazarus lying at his gate" (no. 42).

Our own lifeguard

Going back to the swimming pool idea, being a steward for the poor is like being a lifeguard. Hundreds of people play in a pool on a hot day, and the lifeguard is there for every one of them. But who is the lifeguard most looking out for? Not the splashing, happy, shouting swimmers. No, the lifeguard watches for the one who stays under too long.

In the same way, God watches over all, but has a special solicitude for those trapped on the bottom. In the Old Testament, we read many times of God's concern for those on the bottom. Just one of those references is found in Isaiah 25: "You are a refuge to the poor, a refuge to the needy in distress" (4).

When a lifeguard sees someone who is on the bottom too long, he dives right in. In Jesus, we see God diving right in -- the Lifeguard extraordinaire.

And who does the divine lifeguard find on the bottom? Prostitutes, sinners, tax collectors. The lost sheep. At the very start of his mission, Jesus cites Isaiah and states that he has come "to bring glad tidings to the poor" (Lk 4:18).

A lifeguard goes to the bottom of the pool, into the dark, the cold, the airless place. In similar fashion, Jesus went to the bottom; "he emptied himself" for us (Phil 2:7).

"Jesus shares the life of the poor," the Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us, "from the cradle to the cross; he experiences hunger, thirst and privation. Jesus identifies himself with the poor of every kind and makes active love toward them the condition for entering his kingdom" (n. 544).

But, just as the lifeguard doesn't stay on the bottom of the pool with someone who is drowning, so Jesus did not simply walk alongside the poor. Instead, he brought them to the light, to the air, back among the living. As Vatican II told us about divine revelation in Jesus: "God was with us, to deliver us from the darkness of sin and death, and to raise us up to eternal life" (Constitution on Divine Revelation, 4).

Don't wait

As followers of Christ, stewards of the Good News that is meant to deliver all up from the darkness, we realize that no one is meant to be at the bottom of the pool. Just as no one in a swimming pool would be expected to ignore someone on the bottom -- "Oh, let the lifeguard handle it" -- neither are we expected to wait for someone else to bring the Good News to anyone.

"As followers of Christ," the U.S. Bishops wrote in their 1986 pastoral letter, "we are challenged to make a fundamental 'option for the poor' -- to speak for the voiceless, to defend the defenseless, to assess life styles, policies and social institutions in terms of their impact on the poor" (Economic Justice for All, 16).

By baptism -- a literal dive into the pool -- we were called to lives of service in ministry, called to be lifeguards looking out for those on the bottom. Just as people swim different strokes -- from butterfly to dog paddle -- we have received different gifts to live out that ministry. But whether we are called to offer a cup of cold water or found a homeless shelter, we must follow the Lifeguard and raise everyone trapped on the bottom into the light.