“You give them something to eat,” Jesus responded when the Apostles asked him to disperse the crowd so they could go into the surrounding villages to get something to eat (Mark 6:37).
Suffering and poverty can be frightening and it is all too easy for us to dismiss situations around us as someone else’s problem to attend to rather than our own. Jesus consistently, though, makes clear to us that we each must respond to the suffering and poverty around us. Not only does he tell us how blessed are the poor (ask any of our 4th graders about this—happy happy happy they will tell you), but Jesus also lets us know, without a doubt, that he also grieves over the rich when their riches become the consolation they seek (cf Luke 6:24-26).
Pope Francis encourages us to not fear poverty. In Evangelii Gaudium (Joy of the Gospel) he tells us why he wants a Church that is poor for the poor; “They have much to teach us—in their difficulties they know the suffering Christ. We need to let ourselves be evangelized by them.” We have much to appreciate in the poor and lowly, much to learn and love of their experiences and their ways of living the faith, the ways of life their poverty necessitates but still have inherent beauty in them.
“True love is always contemplative, and permits us to serve the other not out of necessity or vanity, but rather because he or she is beautiful above and beyond mere appearances,” Francis said. Only when “the love by which we find the other pleasing leads us to offer him something freely,” he tells us through the words of Saint Thomas Aquinas, can we “properly accompany the poor on their path of liberation.”
Jacques Maritain wrote many years back in his introduction to Leon Bloy: Pilgrim of the Absolute that “we can give nothing we have not received, being in the likeness of Him who has received everything from His Father. That is why the more one gives, the more one needs to receive, the more one is a beggar.”
“Our commitment [to the poor] does not consist exclusively in activities or programs of assistance,” the Pope continues. Simply being “efficient” in providing for the basic needs of those who are poor is not our first concern he says. Our faith tells us we are members of one body, with Christ as our head, that suffers or radiates joy together, and loving, personal concern for the poor must be our focus first.
How we have this loving concern when we aren’t materially poor is that we come to realize our own poverty. The poverty Maritain spoke of where we realize that we, too, are reduced to being beggars; the poor are those of us who, whether poor, middle class or wealthy, realize we are weak, realize we are sinners and beg our Lord Jesus to save us and trust in His magnificent mercy.
In other words our poverty is about humility. A humility that allows us to see the beauty in all people, responding to the needs of others with love rather than efficiency. Jesus first responded to our sinfulness not with efficiency and various programs of help, but with love—He had nothing but love on the Cross. It was the richness of his mercy and love that saved us, not the wealth and efficiency of the world. Spiritual wealth, the greatest wealth, is found in Jesus—the Kingdom of God that already belongs to the poor in spirit and is already at hand.
We all need to make real the mercy that is central to the Gospels, appreciating the poor in their goodness, to receive the love of the poor, even as we work to alleviate their suffering. Loving attentiveness to the needs of those who suffer, are poor or troublesome, and to our own inherent poverty as sinners, will help us see the value and beauty in all. Then we won’t be indifferent to suffering, seeing it as someone else’s problem to take care of. We won’t be so frightened to be poor, spiritual or material, and lasting changes in the disparity between the rich and poor, the humble and proud will come about and all will feel at home with each other.
Soy hombre: duro poco / y es enorme la noche. / Pero miro hacia arriba: / las estrellas escriben. / Sin entender comprendo: / tambien soy escritura / y en este mismo instante / alguien me deletrea. - Octavio Paz -
(I am a man: little do I last / and the night is enormous. / But I look up: / the stars write. / Unknowing I understand: / I too am written, / and at this very moment / someone is spelling me out.) - Octavio Paz -
Below is a link to a video during Pope Francis’ visit to Mexico in February showing some of the dire poverty in Mexico City. Though he probably didn’t see the poverty in this particular area, he did see much poverty in other areas while in Mexico and responded with his tender compassion.
I go a bit out on a limb this time and will include a poem of my own from 2010 about an experience I had one day when serving the Lazarus meal at St. Philip Melkite Catholic Church in San Bernardino. Was a most beautiful and touching experience bringing clarity to what Pope Francis said about the poor having much to teach us. The placemats mentioned are something the 3rd and 4th graders had done during art to be placed on the tables at St. Philip for the meal that evening.
The Man Who Was Poor
by naditaAnne Alhadef
Those who knew didn’t teach anymore. In poverty of thought / they had too much, had something to hold onSomething / to lose. Afraid of many things they knew not how to / strengthen the spirit in each other. /
What a contrast The Man Who Was Poor. /
In line again that day it was a pilgrimage of humility and / meekness. He was poor and needed to be fed, it was as sim- / ple as that. He would be feed that day. A plate, and tea; a / hot meal. One that I breathed in longingly as I got out of the / car. Yes! I had come by car, satiated and saying I was poor. /
We served the meal that day and I ate nothing. No bed or / shower, or comforts of his own The Man Who Was Poor closed / the gap on love and served a meal of his own. /
Love is funny that way, when it’s not taken for granted. Given / the slightest of freedom it shines brightest in the smallest of / ways. He didn’t have any rules or guides to tell him the place- / mat on the table on the table that day was special. The exaltation of his / poverty taught him all he needed to know. /
I can’t say he was happier than those who have wealth, for I / do not know The Man Who Was Poor, but his word were such / music that my heart still sings from their echo of truth. For it / was not the placemat itself that was peculiar to love, but the / simple act of giving. /
The Man Who Was Poor hadn’t stopped that morning to look at / the sun as it rose over the Grand Canyon. He wasn’t going to / travel around the country to share his learning. He wasn’t / even going to take the placemat with him. He was going to / leave and still be poor. /
His blessing playing in my heart he showed how the greatest / of things turn on the simplest of responses. The world, / though, carried on with itself as The Man Who Was Poor left / that day.
7 March 2016