Gospel of Matthew, chapter 4:6

When an acquaintance had a sudden nervous breakdown, disappeared from home, and was found by detectives a week later living on the underground railroad tracks of Grand Central Terminal, my perspective on life was changed irrevocably. “If it happened to him, it can happen to anyone,” a voice whispered within my soul. “Are you so arrogant as to think that you can remain untouched by life’s vicissitudes?” “There but for the grace of God go I” became the mantra by which I lived, and from that point forward I began to look at troubled souls differently, with a softer, gentler eye. So, as my spiritual master instructed, I never gave these panhandlers less than a dollar. Working as I did in Greenwich Village I had frequent encounters with these tragic souls.

One evening, I was standing outside my office building on Twelfth Street and Broadway, waiting for my husband to pick me up by car. “Please, ma’am, can you spare some change?” The voice, soft and entreating, broke into my reverie. A panhandler stood before me in tattered clothes, his manner mild, apologetic. His eyes were gentle and kind and sweet. Despite the harshness of his life, his face was luminous and radiant. There was a certain aura he emanated that made me feel safe. I knew instantly what my spiritual master meant when he called them: “little angels.” Surely this man belonged to that class. I dug into my pocketbook and began to pull out a dollar bill. It was nestled close to a five. I began to feel the tension of a conflict tug at my temples. I gave him the five His mouth crinkled into a large grin, and his eyes lit up.
“Oh thank you, ma’am!” he said effusively. “You don’t know how much this means to me. I haven’t eaten a decent meal for days.”

I nodded my head in acknowledgement and he began to walk away. A minute later, he made a U-turn and wheeled back to my side. “I want to thank you again and shake your hand,” he announced magnanimously, extending his arm in an almost chivalrous way. “What’s your name?” he asked softly. I trusted this man, but for some strange reason that I still can’t fathom, I told him that my name was Alexandra. “Alexandra,” he mused. “I’ll never forget you, Alexandra. My name is James. I’m sure we’ll meet again one day.”

Two years later, deeply engrossed in my thoughts, I stepped off a curb at a busy intersection at Broadway and Forty-second Street. A horn blared and a woman screamed. I had stepped right into the path of an oncoming car. “Alexandra, look out” a voice shouted in warning. Suddenly, I felt a strong hand pull me away and back up to the curb. The car whizzed by, just inches from where I had stood a second ago. I turned around to face my benefactor. It was James. I gazed at him in disbelief, thunderstruck. He, however, didn’t seem to share my surprise at all. “I told you we would meet again,” he smiled sweetly. He stretched out his hand once again – the hand into which I had tentatively dropped the five-dollar bill; the hand that I had shaken with such unease; the hand that had saved my life. We shook hands once again and then James disappeared into the crowd

“Little angels,” my spiritual master had called them.

Kelly McAdam

Comment:
God takes care of us in various ways, and often He takes care of us in ways unimaginable. In the above story by Kelly McAdam, God’s ministering Angel came to her in the form of a down-and out panhandler on the streets of New York.

Fr. Hugh Duffy