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.”