TURN TOWARD THE POOR

In all societies throughout the world the dynamic is the same: the competent look after themselves and cannot see who  invisible  or who is pushed aside to the margins. The challenge placed before Christianity by Pope Leo is to pay attention to the little ones who are forgotten. We are not asked to move into some Third World country but to look around to those who live in our neighborhood.

 

In every society there are blind spots. In e very family there are blind spots. We want to be very aware of the difficulty that most people have with taking ownership of their own blind spots; their own negatives biases. 

 

Our Christianity is a very compassionate religion. It is never a  “God-and-me” event. The closer we draw toward God (i.e., the divine), the closer we will draw to our fellow human being. Our faith does not ask whether the poor are worthy, living up-right lives and are nice persons. It sees all human beings of precious dignity and worth. No one is every born second-class. 

 

When we open ourselves to recognizing who is poor in our midst, we are very surprised how challenging this proves to be in our approach to others. Naming the poor who live close to us can be very upsetting at times.

 

When we speak about the poor we must always add “the poor with their many faces.” Poverty is not just the homeless people in our large cities or only on the East Side of Vancouver.

 

The poor are always very close to us.

 

The poor is your aged Mother who suffers dementia and can no longer be cared for by a family member. She is in a care home and does not recognize any of her children anymore.  Any chance for a conversation is very, very limited. This is why you are encouraged to visit your aged Mother with someone else. With another person you can have some conversation and will not get bored so quickly. The poor of this society live in care homes.

 

The poor person is your nephew struggling with drug and alcohol addiction. His life is on the edge of total collapse. He will lose his wife and family, his house and his job. The addiction has so messed up any sense of responsibility and ability to sustain a meaningful relationship. He is a blood relative and you feel very deeply for a messed-up life. The face of the poor is right within our families.

 

Your co-worker, aged thirty-four, has just received a cancer diagnosis. This has hit him like a punch in the stomach. He is windless and feels knocked down by his own body. The proposed treatments appear very difficult for this person. 

 

When we turn and walk with our neighbor who is suffering, confused and needing support, we are turning toward Christ.  Joining in supporting the poor with their many faces, is joining to support Christ. Our faith clearly links our human compassion with the divine compassion. Reaching out to the ‘other’ is reaching out to Christ, to the divine heart.

 

 

THE POOR ARE ALWAYS VERY CLOSE

 

It is always good to have one or two colds per winter season. It jolts us into the awareness of how important our health is, and how much we take our good health for granted. When you are sneezing, you appreciate good health. 

 

We need living encounters with the Gospel of Jesus to appreciate what religious faith is all about. We need those moments that alert us to “stop, look and listen.”

 

Pope Leo’s exhortation, “Delexi si,” was just such a wake-up call to all Christians and people of all religious faith to turn toward the poor. The downside of religion is that we so caught up in “management” that wd can overlook the heartbeat of our Christian faith. 

 

The message can be summarized in one sentence: “Love for the Lord, then, is one with love for the poor (#5).

 

The heartbeat of our God become flesh (i.e., the Incarnation) is the outpouring of the love and mercy of God for all human beings. God comes to share the divine life, compassion and mercy with us; human beings in all our weaknesses. No one is excluded from the action and the love of God. Human beings exclude each other, consider some people more important than others, do violence to the fellow human beings. This is not of God. God is just the opposite. Every human being has been created in the likeness of God. Every human being carries the very imprint of the life, goodness and mercy of God.

 

When we begin to believe and share in the very life of our God (breathing and walking with Jesus Christ that is) we will always draw closer to our fellow human being. The more open we are with the love of God, the more open we will be with our wounded, suffering brothers and sisters. 

 

This is why Christianity is such a hands-on religion. We look for the reality of Jesus in the poor right around us. Our religion moves us to see the very face of Jesus in the poor, the forgotten and the marginalized. Authentic love for Christ always leads us to the poor with their many faces.

 

Too many people consider the poor to be the homeless people in Regina and other large cities. That is one form of poverty.

 

The poor might be your brother-in-law who is forced to retire early because of a serious breakdown in his health. The poor might be your co-worker who struggles with bouts of depression and withdraws from all involvement wit others. Isolation is a very strong indicator of poverty.

 

This little reflection is meant to move us to reflect on how the poor, with their many faces, are so close to us. To serve Christ is to walk with the poor of our own community.

 

 

 

BUT THE HEART OF GOD IS POOR

Today I want to reflect on the poverty of God. How does G od actually act and govern the world? If you want to find out what people are really like, just live with them for a few weeks. If people treat others poorly, it probably means that ‘hurting people hurt people.”

 

When we have too much religion, or are too comfortable in our religious convictions, our interpretation of the personality of God is very comfortable. Too much religion means that God will never upset us; and he will never challenge us!

 

Go back to the message that the angel (a worker-bee in God’s world) comes to Mary: young, illiterate and without power. She is a woman: a little one in that society. Now God comes to the person at the bottom (i.e., without power) and asks this young woman to become mother. God asks the impossible, and she accepts.

 

Mary recognizes what God is doing. “He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty” (Lk 1:52-53). Those whom the world regards as powerful, skillful and the people you should ask to get things done, are passed over.  The rich are sent away!

 

Recognize how this is so counter cultural. Those whom society thinks are important are passed over. God chooses the unimportant: a young woman in the backwoods of the world.

 

This is what God is like at the very center. God comes to us in littleness, in poverty. God’s actions upset so many people, and sincere believers at that!

 

As Pope Leo encourages believers and humanity to turn toward the poor, he is making explicit what God is in  reality. God will be God and act like God—no matter how upsetting it might b to so many successful human  beings  (by human standards).

 

This papal exhortation, Dilexi te, stems directly from the very life and heart of God. If God turns towards the poor, so should all the believers turn toward the poor in their own societies.

 

Born Catholics and Orthodox Christiaens have a strong devotion toward Mary. She is always one of us human beings. She sets the standard for how God is working. God comes among the working poor to bring about the great event of salvation: the revelation of the life and mercy of God in the human skin of Jesus. Mary says yes to God’s way of working. 

 

God begins the event of salvation by upsetting humanity.

 He does not choose the powerful and the famous persons.

Now, apply Mary to yourself. Are you not one of the little ones of this world?  Reflect   how God has chosen you to bring about the redemption of human beings. What great things of God’s plan is meant to work through your life?

TURNING THE CHURCH TOWARD THE POOR

When we center our focus on the Church as a universal phenomena we see the importance of coming to grips with our roots. How do we allow the original insights and concerns for Jesus influence and shape how we do church today. 

 

At the beginning of October Pope Leo issued an exhortation to the Church, and all Christiaan people, of our need to turn toward the poor of this world. 

 

Now in every country there are countless people who are without social and economic power. They are the working poor who so often are just overlooked. They struggle to survive, but they are on the margins of societies.

 

The exhortation of Pope Leo turns toward the way that Jesus actually lived and ministered in the society of his day. All the words and actions of Jesus are divine revelation. What he did speaks of who God actually is. 

 

Jesus gave scandal and was offensive because he reached out and fraternalized with the tax collectors, the lepers, the prostitutes and the outcasts of his day.  He made the unwanted feel wanted and included. 

 

Now, this is the gift and the challenge that Pope Leo is presenting to the people of the Church (and all Christiaan believers). We take as the opening to this reflection the very words from the exhortation: “in this call to recognize him in the poor and the suffering, we see revealed the very heart of Christ, his deepest feelings and choices, which every saint seeks to imitate.”

 

Our Christian faith leads us to recognize in the faces of the poor, the rejected and forgotten ones, the very face of Christ. One of the key moments to seeing Christ in our daily lives is to recognize Christ in the poor and the suffering. That is what the description of the final judgment in Matthew 25, 31-46, spells it out so clearly. Jesus did not say that “you feed the hungry,” but rather, “I was hungry.” This has gripped the imagination and the  commitment of so many Christiaens throughout the ages, that they are challenged by the reality of the poor within their own countries.  They have not walked away, indifferent to the neglect and sufferings of the poor. 

 

We live in such a good time in the history of Christianity. We live in the Church that challenges everyone to turn toward the poor and marginalized. Will our hearts not respond the challenging words of Pope Leo: “There we saw how Jesus identified himself “with the lowest ranks of society” and how, with his love poured out to the end, he confirms the dignity of every human being, especially when “they are weak, scorned, or suffering.”