THE POOR ARE VERY CLOSE

 

What we see is determined very much by who we are. Your mother (no matter how old she night be) will always see if your collar is straight on the photo. No one else will even notice; but you mother will!

 

What you see is determined by where you stand!

 

When you move around Canada, different people will see (or not see) the people who are poor. Many times, the poor are actually invisible to many of our citizens. 

 

We want to teach people that the poor are very close. We need to use the expression (originally arriving out of Italy), ‘the poor with their many faces.’

 

Poverty is not only economic poverty. We have a very polite way of describing this poverty as “they have a very weak cash flow.” The absence of financial resources is a definite form of poverty. Th\ink about the situation when you were a student in Calgary: nineteen years old and flat broke! Now that is a painful memory of poverty.

 

One of the most common forms of poverty is your aged mother in the nursing home. She may be secure, kept neat and clean, properly nourished – but hardly anyone ever comes to visit her. Her basic physical needs are well taken care of, but there is a hunger in her heart for the love and friendship she knew from her family. Many times ,the only person that ever visits is her one sister (who is just a year older than Mom). Poverty is a longing in the heart of your aged mother!

 

Poverty is the man discharged from jail. As soon as people know he has a prison record, no one will employ him. It is almost impossible to find a good job and become self-reliant. This man suffers from social poverty: the absence of trust from the society at large.

 

Poverty is the man or woman struggling with drug addiction. Only the persons trapped in this addiction to drugs can understand that their life is capture in a bear trap. Many people are not aware that hunters used to use this very strong steel trap of capture bears. 

A bear is a very strong animal and can break almost any sort of trap but the older bear trap (now illegal) snapped on the bear’s leg and the animal could not break the trap or the chain that held the trap. Drug addiction is an unforgiving, unrelenting trap. The cornered addict cannot shake the addiction. Their life is a living hell until they can turn into recovery. Anyone who uses drugs can innocently fall into this horrendous trap. Drug addiction is poverty with deep, deep pain.

 

Poverty is your aged great-grandfather, who can manage well on his own, but all his siblings and friends have all died. In the true sense of the word, he is all alone. The people, with whom he associates with, are all thirty years younger than he is. They are all sixty-five. Poverty is being alone, the last one, in old age. 

 

When we look around at who is poor, we discover that they are very close. We just have to adjust our vision: they are right in front of us.

 

And now we are challenged to see the face of Christ in each one of the poor, with their many faces.