In a society of strangers, in a world where rural villagers are now more the rarity than the norm, we all live private lives in increasingly larger groups where no one is responsible and everyone is responsible at the same time.

But the great saints allow for no such excuses. They confront us with being keepers of the Garden wherever we are. Wherever we are, they show us, justice must reign, equality must prevail, and the defense of the little ones of God must be assured. By us.

Catherine of Siena is clear about the implications of it. When anything deviates from the Will of God, we must leap to the bar to defend those on whom the burden will fall most heavily, most urgently, most unfairly. We must carry on our own shoulders our weakest as well as our strong.

“Cry out with a thousand tongues,” Catherine of Siena writes. “I see the world is rotten because of silence.”

It is your voice and mine, alone as well as together, that are meant to raise the alarms. If we don’t point out the breakdowns in human community and make clear the unseen millions in need, they go on being unseen by the many.

There is someone right now, right here, who is crying out for help. Whose voice are you not listening to today?

—an excerpt from the May issue of The Monastic Way by Joan Chittister