This would normally be the week that our village would be witnessing the setting up of the amusement rides and the booths for the Granville Fourth of July festivities, but, of course, that is not meant to be this year of the coronavirus. We'll need to find other ways to keep the Fourth this summer. Underneath the usual festivities, though, there's a commemoration of the independence of our land and the values we associate with that observance. For me, though, this year the Fourth of July rings a bit hollow in light of the horrible killings of so many of our black sisters and brothers and the ongoing demonstrations and the protests that have flowed out of those killings: some of those protests over the top, of course.
     As I read today's Gospel with Jesus's remarks about that cup of cold water that he told us we need to provide to the little ones of the earth, my mind went back to a weekly occurrence that I observed at my grandma's back porch in the double that we shared on Patterson Avenue near Ohio State. I was just a kid then. An old woman would shuttle down the back alley and across our yard to Grandma's porch. She was dark-skinned but was not an African-American. I believe that she was really a gypsy woman who carried a cane at the ready, and I'm sorry that I can't recall her name now, but she would sit there waiting for Grandma to come out with a sandwich and just the smallest, tiniest little glass of beer. They would visit and then Grandma would place a dollar bill in her outstretched hand--and that was a dollar that Grandma really couldn't spare. Then that woman would force her body up and then down the alley she went to the old Tuttle Field, and I don't know where she went from there. But she was truly one of those little ones that Jesus was speaking of, and my grandma, I know, received her reward from the Lord for doing that.
     We have almost a week now until the Fourth of July. This year, though, I do urge you all to find a way to provide that cup of cold water to the little ones of our earth. Our St. Vincent de Paul conference can help you do that, and you can send a check to the parish for that good cause or to help out the St. Vincent Haven that we here at St. Edward's assist. And, of course, you may know many other ways to do that. The trick is: just do that.
     And if you need another example to inspire you, listen please to the words of an 86-year-old grandmother in her letter to America magazine. She wrote this:
     "I'm an 86-year-old mother of five, a grandmother, and a great-grandmother. I am white. I became physically frail with a chronic illness. Before that, I rang doorbells, registered voters, made pleading phone calls, pounded the sidewalk for a just society in our country. My heart," she said, "is bereft of comfort at the foot of this cross. Would that I could hold George Floyd and all the others in my arms, close to my breast, and say to them, I LOVE YOU." Signed, Angela Embree.
     So let all of us find a way to say that, then, to the little ones of our earth. It would be a grand way to observe the Fourth of July. And, dear friends, may all of you have a Fourth of July that is truly a glorious one despite all that surrounds us today.