Review: Priest and Beggar

 

This book was a gift from God to me, literally.  It was given to me in the Adoration Chapel one night.  It came about as a result of my gift of a different book --- which had been given to me.  I’m not sure where the book-giving chains began, or where they will end.  I’m just a link, as you will see, like the subject of this book which I will review shortly.

The first book, given me by a friend, was one of meditations for Eucharistic Adoration.  I read them each night in the chapel for a year, and on the night when I had completed the book for the second time, I offered it to a stranger who was praying in the chapel.  She thanked me for the gift, but the next night she came to me all excited.  Inside the front cover of that book was a stamp indicating the book had once been on an air force base in Alaska.  The year 1959 was written below the stamp.  The woman said she and her husband had served at that base for 3 years, and in 1959 her child was born!

It was the next night when that woman gave me Priest and Beggar, saying she thought I’d like it.  I did, very much.

 

Review:  Priest and Beggar

This book is the life story of Fr. Aloysius Schwartz, who lived from 1930 to 1992.  He lived the life of a saint, and his formal sainthood status is now being pursued.  And until I had read this book, I’d never heard of him.

“Perhaps no priest in the history of the world did as much as he did for the orphaned and tormented child.”  It was said he based his life on St. Vincent DePaul, but Fr. Al accomplished much more.  In one of his encounters with Mother Teresa he said he wanted to buy her some washing machines --- “Your sisters shouldn’t be wasting their time hand-washing their saris.  The world already knows their humility.  They should stay in the streets, working.”  Fr. Al was all about accomplishing things for the poor.  Yet, Fr. Al worked, and lived, with the poor in the streets.  He took a vow of extreme poverty, as did each religious person in the orders founded to do his work of charity.

Fr. Al vowed to give his life for the poor, and requested to be sent to Korea in 1957.  He found millions dying there of starvation for food --- and for God.  And within a few years he changed Korea’s history.  From food to faith to housing to schooling to hospitals, Fr. Al made it happen for tens of thousands of orphans.  He took over management of government institutions where 30% of the residents died each month, and in a couple of months the numbers dying dramatically dropped.  Cities emerged from garbage dumps.  Then he was asked to help in the Philippines, and then Mexico, with similar results.  And many thousands of lives, and souls, were saved. 

And he and the religious orders who came after him lived as one of the poor ones they were helping, as family.

This is the story of how one humble man, trusting in God’s help, can change the world.

The book’s subtitle is “The Heroic Life of Venerable Aloysius Schwartz.”  The world today needs heroes like Fr. Al.  This book was a gift to me, an old man, and I will gift it on.  I pass this review on to you.  And what will you do with it?