If we refuse to take the risk of being vulnerable, we are already half-dead. If you are half-dead, you don't have to starve with the people of Ethiopia. You don't have to share the terrible living conditions of old people struggling to exist on dwindling, inadequate social-security payments in our overcrowded, hostile cities. You don't have to smell the stench of filth and disease and hunger in the "favelas" and barrios.

We are not all called to go to El Salvador, or Moscow, or Calcutta, or even the slums of New York. But none of us will escape the moment when we have to decide whether to withdraw, to play it safe, or to act on what we prayerfully believe to be right.