Bordering the Superdome and the skyscrapers, hotels, and office buildings that form the financial and retail district of New Orleans is one of the worst slums in the city. Bankers label this area not merely low income, but highly distressed low income. Drug dealers and prostitutes who conduct their business from corner pay phones control the streets. If those who run their illicit businesses don’t want you in the neighborhood, they simply burn down your building.

Father Harry Thompson, S.J., decided to do something about the situation. Father Thompson, who died in 2001, had been president of a large ­Jesuit high school and wanted to devote the last years of his life to significant ministries in the inner city.

Human life is a fragile gift, much more fragile than we care to admit. Despite the inspiring stories of rare individuals  forced to endure severe adversities and manage to survive, the more common reality of human experience corresponds to the Rule of Threes: the average human being can survive only three minutes without air, three hours in severe conditions without shelter, three days without water, three weeks without food, and three months without hope.

As a young priest in Denver, Colorado, I was once asked to accompany a family at the graveside of their infant son, who had died during childbirth. I knew only that they were Spanish-speaking and that I would need to perform the ritual in Spanish. I met the family at the small grave; they were a young couple with a four-year-old daughter. No other friends or family were present, which told me that they were recently arrived immigrants. They were poor and alone.