A DAY FOR THE WORLD’S POOR

                    

Pope Francis has asked the church to make this coming Sunday as a “World Day for the Poor.”

 

What is going on here?

 

There is great wisdom in asking the people of the Church to give special attention to a particular saint or a particular cause, such as praying for world peace. Instead of assuming that the people are paying attention you create a special day to focus their attention on the poor.

 

We are so busy trying to make a living, trying to keep things going at home and in our civic community that we have little attention for others. In daily conversation,  you may announce that you have a new apt on your computer and immediately the person next to you will speak about their computer. Immediately, they have centered the conversation on themselves. We are not even aware of how wrapped up within ourselves we are. 

 

The people of the Church are no different. We are so focused in on our own issues that we fail to recognize the poor who are so close to us.

 

Too often we have made the serious mistake of “doing” for others what we judge they could not do for themselves. For example, we have set up  food banks (this year marks forty years since the first food bank opened up in Edmonton).  But is there help for people to get on their own feet so that they do not need to use the services of the food bank? Do they need training to get into the employment market? Do they need help in management skills so that they can look at you as the trainer and say, ‘But I can do this myself’? 

 

If you are a ‘news junkie’ you will be flooded with items that keep you informed of the difficulties that climate change is making on many of the poor of world. 

 

What Pope Francis is nudging the people of the Church to do is to listen, observe and open their hearts to the poor of this world. Open your heart to the millions of displaced people scattered throughout the world. Listen to the girls and boys who cannot attend school because their families do not have the resources to send them to school. Listen to the families that have no access to any medical services because of their poverty.

 

But Pope Francis does not want us to just stop at the observation platform. He also moves us to receive from the poor. In the richness of the Catholic sacramental spirituality this opens us to see the poor as the sacrament of Christ. The poor are moments that we can encounter Christ. The poor can become moments to receive the love and mercy of Christ. The poor can be the very place where we touch Christ.

 

We take very seriously the teachings of the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 25: Whatever we do for the poor we do to Christ. 

 

May this Sunday be a day of enlightenment. May the people of the Church, everywhere, open their hearts to find Christ in the poor.