James 2:26

In New York City, the police advise you not to take out your wallet when approached by a beggar –but you develop a sixth sense about these things. So I had no misgivings about the young black woman, shy and rail-thin and obviously homeless, her matted hair covered by a scarf, who approached me a few years ago in the nearly empty Times Square subway station while I was waiting for the train.

Could I give her some money for a meal? I took a few dollars from my wallet. Then I noticed her feet. She was wearing threadbare sneakers and had no socks on. I asked her why. She had no money for socks, she explained, as she turned to ask another commuter for spare change.

I had no more money to offer. But the vision of her sockless feet accompanied me home. I rummaged through my dresser drawers for a few pairs of nearly new, thick socks and put them in plastic bag. I waited for the woman for the next several days in the same place, at the same time, but she never showed up. Unwilling to give up, unable to linger on the platform, I brought my little package up a flight of stairs to the woman who worked in the token booth. Though we had never spoken, we did have a smiling relationship. I usually traveled to and from Manhattan before rush hour, and she knew my face.

I asked the clerk to open the booth’s side door. I handed her the bag and an assignment: “Please be on the lookout for a thin, black homeless woman who comes to the station in mid-afternoon and has no socks.” My schedule kept me from that subway station for the next several weeks. When I finally went by her booth again, the clerk excitedly waved me over.

No, the young homeless woman had never showed up. But, the clerk told me, the day after I left the bag two homeless men knocked on the booth’s door and said their socks were wet. Their feet were cold. Did she have any dry socks? She gave the men my package. She had never seen those men before, she said. She had worked at that station for several years, and no one had ever asked her for dry socks before.

“The Lord,” she said, “sure works in mysterious ways.”

Steve Lipman

Comment:
No good deed, it is said, goes unrewarded. It would appear to Steve that his good deed of preparing a plastic bag of “nearly new, thick socks” for a poor lady in need would go unrewarded. But, God had other plans. Steve’s gift of “dry socks” was meant for “two homeless men” who came out of the blue, knocking on the door of the token booth for dry socks. As the lady in the token booth said: “God works in mysterious ways.”

Fr. Hugh Duffy