What is Wrong with People?

Apr 12, 2009 by Fr Luke Palumbis

On my way in to Church for the first of the Bridegroom Services, I witnessed a less than stellar example of integrity and dignity.  I pulled into the gas station connivence store, which is less than a mile from my home, to pick up a bottle of Gatorade.  As I pulled in to one of the many open parking spaces, I looked to my right and saw two individuals in a old truck that looked as if it had seen better days.  Another individual, a man in his 40’s, obviously with the people in the truck, walked up to the driver’s window, handed the driver something in a brown bag, then proceed to urinate on the gas station parking lot.  As I walked across the front of their truck, making sure to be out of ‘splash distance,’ I made eye contact with the people in the truck, who gave me a look as if I was the one who was acting indecent.

The clerk of the gas station was watching from the window by his register as the man was finishing his public urination.  I motioned outside, and suggested that he may want to have that hosed off—no response.

Then as I was exiting out the front door of the store, a group of 3 or 4 entered.  I am a tall man, and when one of the group, a young man with a mouth full of fake gold teeth, saw me, he referenced my height with a string of explicit fragment statements that suggested he had never finished an educational journey through public school. 

What an experience!  What’s wrong with people? 

Remember, the power and essence of Christianity is HOPE.  Hope that there is something better—in eternity, in this world, in our towns, in individuals, and in ourselves!  During this journey of Holy Week, join me in praying for the ignorant and abhorrent, that they are somehow be affected with the desire to transform, and that we recognize the ways that we may be ignorant and abhorrent in our own lives—and turn it to repentance.