Ripples in the Ocean

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In 1938, Hilde Back was sixteen years old and running out of time. She was a Jewish girl in Germany as Adolf Hitler’s persecution of Jews intensified. The Nuremberg Laws had stripped Jews of citizenship and had banned Jewish children from attending public schools. Hilde’s education had ended. Her future was closing in.

Then a stranger stepped forward—someone whose name Hilde would never know. He gave her family money to escape.

In 1940, Hilde fled to Sweden. She was accepted, but her parents were not. Swedish policy at the time refused entry to older refugees. Hilde watched her parents stay behind, knowing what that meant. She would never see them again.

Her father died in the concentration camp. Her mother was transferred to another camp. Hilde received one final letter before the silence became permanent.

At 16, Hilde arrived in Sweden alone, carrying the weight of survival and the memory of a stranger’s kindness that had saved her life.

She built a new life in her adopted country. She studied. She trained to become a kindergarten teacher. She taught drama at a college for preschool teachers. She lived modestly, quietly, for decades—a survivor who rarely spoke about what she had endured.

But she never forgot the stranger who had helped her family escape. She never forgot how one person’s small act of generosity had meant the difference between life and death.

In the mid-1970s, Hilde learned about a program that supported children in need across the world. She was living on a teacher’s modest salary. She didn’t have much. But she remembered being denied education as a Jewish girl in Germany. She remembered what it meant to have doors closed because of who you were. She decided to sponsor a child’s education—someone who would otherwise have no chance to attend school.

She signed up to send about US$15 per month to keep a child in primary school in Kenya. The child’s name was Chris Mburu.

Thousands of miles away from Sweden, in rural Kenya, Chris Mburu was brilliant. He earned excellent grades in the small village of Mitahato in Kenya’s Central Province, not far from Mount Kenya.

But brilliance was not enough. His family was poor. In his region, most families survived on less than US$2 a day picking coffee. Secondary school cost about U$10 per week—an impossible sum for most families. Without financial help, Chris’s academic promise would end after primary school, and he would spend the rest of his life in the coffee fields.

Then the sponsorship came through. A woman in Sweden—someone Chris had never met, whose face he had never seen—began sending money every month to pay school fees.

Chris excelled. He completed secondary school at the top of his class. He earned admission to the University of Nairobi. Then, incredibly, he was accepted into Harvard Law School.

From a barefoot child in rural Kenya to a Harvard graduate—all because a Holocaust survivor in Sweden had sent US$15 a month.

Chris became a human rights lawyer. He joined the United Nations, working in the anti-discrimination section, dedicating his life to fighting genocide and crimes against humanity.

But he never forgot his ‘angel’—the mysterious woman whose generosity had changed everything.

In 2001, Chris decided to replicate that kindness. He created a scholarship foundation to help other talented Kenyan children from poor families continue their education. He named it The Hilde Back Education Fund, honoring the benefactor he had never met.

With the help of the Swedish ambassador to Kenya, he began searching for Hilde Back. He wanted to find her. He wanted to thank her. He wanted her to know what her small act had become.

Eventually, he found her. In 2003, Hilde traveled to Kenya for the first time to attend the inauguration ceremony of the fund that bore her name.

At 81 years of age, she met the boy she had sponsored—now a distinguished human rights lawyer. She met him for the very first time. Neither had known the other’s full story.

Chris learned that Hilde was not a wealthy Swedish woman with money to spare. She was a Holocaust survivor who had fled Germany as a teenager, who had lost both parents in concentration camps, who had lived modestly her entire life. Her monthly contributions had been genuinely sacrificial—a meaningful portion of a kindergarten teacher’s salary.

Hilde learned that Chris wasn’t just grateful—he was paying it forward, multiplying her single act of kindness into a foundation that would help hundreds of children.

When the American filmmaker Jennifer Arnold heard Chris’s story, she knew it needed to be told. She flew to Sweden to interview Hilde for a documentary. Arnold discovered something remarkable. Hilde had never really talked about her Holocaust experience before. She had lived with that trauma quietly for decades.

But on camera, for the film, Hilde opened up. She told her story—not just for herself, but so the world could understand the connection between the kindness that saved her and the kindness she extended to Chris.

“If you do something good, it can spread in circles, like rings on the water,” she said. The documentary, entitled A Small Act, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2010 and later aired on HBO.

The UN Secretary-General at the time, Ban Ki-moon, introduced the film at the New York screening, praising it “for highlighting the importance of giving all children an education in the fight against ignorance and bigotry.”

The film changed everything. Donations flooded in. One anonymous donor in London gave US$250,000. What had started as a small fund helping ten children began expanding rapidly.

Within a year of the film’s release, the fund was sponsoring sixty new children. The next year, 160. By January 2024, the Hilde Back Education Fund had helped 973 children in Kenya to continue their studies through secondary school.

Nearly a thousand lives were transformed. Nearly a thousand children who would have ended their education after primary school were now graduating from secondary school with the possibility of university, of careers, of dreams they never imagined possible.

In 2012, Hilde returned to Kenya to celebrate her 90th birthday. Chris brought her to meet some of the children whose lives had been changed by the foundation bearing her name. She saw firsthand how her small monthly contribution to one boy in the 1970s had rippled outward into hundreds of transformed lives. The children treated her like a grandmother—their grandmother.

“I think,” she said, “there’s so much need in the world that we need to help.”

“It just felt normal,” she told her interviewers, “to donate some money to a child. What you send is just a drop in the ocean. I don’t have much. Sometimes you wonder whether it helps.”

She genuinely didn’t understand that she was a hero. She saw herself as an ordinary person who had done a small thing. But to Chris Mburu, she was “an angel who walked into my life and fixed it.”

To nearly a thousand Kenyan children, she became the reason their dreams became possible.

The parallels in their lives were profound. Hilde had survived the Holocaust. Chris worked fighting genocide. Hilde had been denied education as a Jewish child in Nazi Germany. Chris dedicated his foundation to ensuring no child’s education ended because of poverty.

When ethnic violence erupted in Kenya following the 2008 presidential election, Hilde watched the news from Sweden and called Chris, worried about the man she treated like the son she never had. Chris, who had returned to Kenya during the crisis, saw firsthand how ignorance and lack of education fueled ethnic hatred. His foundation’s mission became ever more urgent.

“I would like to see these kids to be educated,” he explained. “Because once you have a society that is very, very ignorant, it becomes the breeding ground for violence, for misinformation, for intolerance.”

Education, he understood, wasn’t just about individual opportunity. It was about preventing the kind of hatred that had killed Hilde’s parents and destroyed millions of lives.

Hilde Back lived to see her 98th birthday. She died on January 13, 2021, in Västerås, Sweden, surrounded by a life she had built from the ashes of trauma—a life defined not by what she had lost, but by what she had given.

She had friends who loved her. She championed theater and literature. She found family in Chris, his wife, and his children. She left behind a legacy that continues rippling outward through every child whose education the fund makes possible.

Her story teaches something essential. You don’t need to be wealthy to change the world. You don’t need to do something grand or dramatic. Sometimes the most profound impact comes from the smallest, most consistent acts of generosity.

US$15 a month. That’s all it took to save a boy’s future. That boy went on to save hundreds more. Those hundreds will go on to impact thousands. On and on, rippling outward like rings of water.

World Kindness Day reminds us that kindness isn’t just a nice gesture. It’s a force that multiplies. It’s an investment that compounds in ways we can never predict.

A stranger saved Hilde’s life in 1940. Hilde saved Chris’s future in the 1970s. Chris has now helped nearly a thousand children. Those children will help others. The circles keep spreading.

Hilde Back understood something essential. The kindness we receive is meant to be passed on. The stranger who saved her family never knew what would come of that act—never knew it would eventually reach rural Kenya, never knew it would create an educational fund, never knew it would transform nearly a thousand lives.

That’s the nature of true kindness. We rarely see where it leads. We act because it’s right, not because we know the outcome.

But every so often, we get to witness the miracle of those expanding circles. We get to see how one person’s small monthly sacrifice becomes another person’s Harvard education, becomes a foundation that changes a thousand lives.

“If you do something good, it can spread in circles like rings of water.” Hilde Back lived that truth. She proved it. She showed us that even in our ordinariness, even with our modest means, even when we wonder if our small contributions matter—they do. They matter more than we can possibly imagine.

The ripples keep spreading. The circles keep growing. The kindness keeps multiplying. It all begins with one small act (cf. Hilde Back Education Fund).

In the prophet Amos, we hear about his return from the desert of Samaria. He finds the leaders of the chosen people wholly given over to the pleasures of the world.

“Lying on ivory beds and sprawling on their divans, they dine on lambs from the flock and stall-fattened veal. … They drink wine by the bowlful, and use the finest oil for anointing themselves, but about the ruin of Joseph they do not care at all” (Amos 6:4,6).

Amos then declares what is to be their destiny. That is why they will be “the first to be exiled” (Amos 6:7). This prophecy was fulfilled a few years afterwards.

The Scriptures continually warn us that excessive concern for comfort and the things of this world will inevitably lead to a neglect of God and of our neighbor. The Gospels tell us about a man who fell into this very trap. Instead of winning heaven through the use of his wealth, he lost it forever (Luke 16:19-31).

The story is about “a rich man who used to dress in purple and fine linen and feast magnificently every day.” At his door there was “a poor man called Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to fill himself with the scraps that fell from the rich man’s table.”

Our Lord contrasts two extreme conditions in the parable: vast wealth in one case, tremendous need in the other. Jesus does not say anything about the rich man’s possessions in themselves. He puts entire emphasis on how they have been used, mentioning only expensive clothes and sumptuous daily banquets. Lazarus was not even given the leftovers.

The rich man did nothing wrong as he amassed his fortune. He was not responsible for the wretched poverty of Lazarus, at least not in any direct way. He didn’t take advantage of the situation to exploit Lazarus.

But the rich man had a definite lifestyle. It might be summed up in the words “he feasted magnificently.” He lived for himself as if God did not exist. He had completely forgotten the fact that we are not owners of what we have, but only administrators.

The rich man had a good time for himself. He was not against God, nor did he oppress his impoverished neighbor. He was simply blind to the existence of the needy person on his doorstep. He lived for himself and spared himself no expense.

What was his sin? He did not see Lazarus. He could have cared for Lazarus if he had not been so selfish. He didn’t use his wealth in a way that was in conformity with God’s desires. He did not know how to share.

St. Augustine comments: “Lazarus was received into heaven because of his humility and not because of his poverty. Wealth itself was not what kept the rich man from eternal bliss. His punishment was for selfishness and disloyalty” (Augustine, Sermon 24,3).

Selfishness can be manifested in an insatiable desire to possess more and more material goods. It can make people blind to the needs of their neighbors. Selfish people come to treat others as if they were objects without value.

We could try to remember today that we all have needy people living close to us—people like Lazarus. We can’t forget to administer what we have with generosity. In addition to the sharing of material goods, we should also be sowers of understanding, sympathy, friendship.

Our life on earth is a testing ground for our generosity. In the Acts of the Apostles, we are told: “It is better to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). Paradoxically, one gets more from giving than from receiving: what one gets is heaven.

If we are generous, we will come to discover that other people are really children of God who need us. We will then be happy on this earth and also for eternity.

Charity itself is the realization of the kingdom of God. It’s one commodity of which there can never be an excess. We have to be alert for the Lazarus in our home, in our office, or place of work.

St. Paul says to Timothy that “covetousness is the root of all evil.” Paul reminds him: “As a man dedicated to God, you must aim to be saintly and religious, filled with faith and love, patient and gentle. Fight the good fight of the faith and win for yourself the eternal life to which you were called…” (1 Tim. 6:10–12).

All Christian men and women have been chosen by God to be the leaven that transforms and sanctifies temporal realities. We should help to save people from eternal death, much as the first Christians did in their communities. When we witness the worldly concerns of so many of our neighbors, we have to remember that the power of our fermentation as yeast, as leaven in the dough, will depend a great deal on our sense of detachment.

We will not be able to influence our surroundings if we permit ourselves to become attached to things we don’t need, if we acquire wasteful spending habits. We need to teach people by our example that happiness and salvation will not come from the possession of material things, but only from living a holy life.

Sobriety, temperance, and detachment will create the conditions for us to be generous with others, to be attentive to the needs of the poor, to comfort the sick. We will then find that we are freed from the snares set by our selfish nature, from a disordered desire for things.

In this way, “we will be able to live solidarity with those who suffer, with the poor, [the sick], and with the marginalized and the oppressed. Our sensitivity will grow. It will not be so hard for us to see Jesus Christ in the needy person in front of us. It is Christ who speaks to us those memorable words: ‘As long as you did it for one of these, the least of my brethren, you did it for me’ (Matt. 25:40). These will be our credentials on the day of judgment. We will all understand at that time that heaven is reserved for those who loved their brothers and sisters in deeds and in truth” (Antonio Fuentes, The Christian Meaning of Wealth).

St. Paul says to the Romans, “Be not conformed to this world” (Rom. 12:2). This was his message to the first Christians in Rome. When we lead selfish lives, we find it very difficult to see the needs of others. We also find it increasingly difficult to see God.

“The rich man was condemned not because he was rich, but because he did not pay attention to the other man. Because he failed to take notice of Lazarus, the person who sat at his door and who longed to eat the scraps from the table” (cf. John Paul II, Homily, October 2, 1979).

We should be willing to give away a great deal while teaching others also to be generous. Christians must not sit idly by as the tide of materialism sweeps over our entire culture. Nor should we become entrapped by a purely economic vision of the world.

In a document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, it says, “Solidarity is a direct requirement of human and supernatural brotherhood” (CDF, Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation, Point 89, March 22, 1986).

This attitude will lead us to live that personal poverty which Jesus called “blessed” (Matt. 5:3). This poverty consists of detachment, of confidence in God, of temperance and generosity, of a longing for justice, of hunger for the kingdom [of heaven], of docility to the Word of God, and perseverance in the truth (cf. ibid., Point 66).

This is quite different from the poverty that oppresses most of our brothers and sisters in this world, impeding their integral development as persons. Before this type of poverty and privation, said John Paul II, “the Church lifts up her voice to promote the solidarity which is so urgently required” (John Paul II, Homily, May 7, 1990).

We have to see the people around us as our brothers and sisters. They are brothers and sisters in need of the great treasure of the faith which we possess. They need our joy, our friendship, and sometimes our economic assistance.

We can’t remain indifferent to conditions in parts of the world when so many are suffering from want of food, lack of education, and ignorance of the truth about man and about God.

We need to examine ourselves to see whether our detachment is a real detachment. Does it lead to practical consequences? Are we creating those ripples in the ocean in outer circles all the time?

Our life should be a model of temperance as far as our use of material goods is concerned. We have to try and see: what can I contribute, even if it’s something very small? The fruit of generosity—because, precisely, that giving of something small can open the door to greater things.

Do we have our heart focused on the treasure that lasts forever, which neither thief can take away nor moth can destroy? (cf. Luke 12:33). If we are faithful, we can have Christ for all eternity.

St. Augustine remembers the story of his conversion, saying, “How lovely I suddenly found it, to be free from the glamor of those vanities, so that now it was a joy to renounce what I had been so much afraid to lose. For you cast them out of me, O true and supreme Loveliness, you cast them out of me and took their place instead, you who are sweeter than all pleasure, yet not to mere flesh and blood; brighter than all light, yet deeper within than any secret; loftier than all honor, but not to those who are high and mighty in their own estimation” (Augustine, Confessions, 9,1,1).

What a shame if we should ever fail to appreciate the treasure of divine love.

We could ask Our Lady that we might be good givers, that every day of our life we might see it as an opportunity to give more, and seek ways and means to give, to be generous, to be detached, so as to create those ripples that can be like outer-going circles in the ocean that reach more and more people all the time.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.