Creer y actuar para renacer

43 crecer y actuar para renacer a few months ago, he must not have “taken a knee”. Anthony died from an overdose, one of 1200 who died in Philadelphia of overdoses this past year! (more than those that die from murders, more than those that die from car accidents). Anthony’s son, Alex, is next to him… the children of those in prison are six times more likely to wind up in prison themselves than those whose parents are not. I’ve got a book of hundreds of kids names including Domingo’s kids. At our Thursday night support group meeting each week in Philadelphia, we pray for the children, for their future. So, prisons can be looked at as the garbage bins of society. And yet they are our brothers and sisters. Fellow human beings who made a bad choice. But is there no redemption? Cannot people change? Jesus Christ tells us that he is in these prisoners (Mt. 25:36); he is in prison in them. Our care for them is intimately connected to our care for the earth, as Pope Francis says. We must not be afraid to go out of our churches and smell like the sheep, to be part of God’s amazing plan to create compost out of garbage, life out of death, to do this for Puerto Ricans and for prisoners, and for this island and its forrests and beaches. To conclude, I want to repeat some key points that I hope I made during this talk. –Prisoners in jail and Puerto Ricans devastated by hurricanes are both people without power. –How we deal with our powerlessness is very important: with despair and dependency, or with faith and action together. –Caring for the environment is intimately connected to how we care for ourselves and each others human dignity. –The Earth itself is in a prison, trying to free itself and us from our blind wastefulness. And yet it is a sacrament. –The parts of our environment and ourselves that seem like garbage can be turned into something that gives us new life. What we may consider garbage is really gold– compost! –The human beings in prison, as well as our beloved Earth and the island of Puerto Rico can and must be rehabilitated by the grace of God