Some years ago, when I was teaching a confirmation programme, I found myself doing a catch-up session for a couple of boys who could not attend one of the classes. These two both went to a very upmarket, public school, and so I was unsurprised when I found the address and was welcome into a really large, and well-appointed home to meet with the two Confirmandi. I was there to teach them about sin, but also about God's love - how God loves every person, completely and unconditionally. I was making this point when one of the boys asked how it can be that God loves everyone when there are so many poor people in the world?
The question was meant really genuinely and not loaded with any ill-will. However, it was a real eye-opener for me that even 2,000 years after the proclamation of the Kingdom of God, and in a part of the world where Christianity has saturated our cultural inheritance, there is still, deeply embedded, the idea that wealth and fortune can be a primary sign of God's love and approval. I, of course, went on to explain that our Christian faith tells us just the opposite; that Jesus taught us "[b]lessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God" (Luke 6.20). Pope Francis, indeed quoting Pope Benedict, puts it this way:
"Today and always, “the poor are the privileged recipients of the Gospel”, and the fact that it is freely preached to them is a sign of the kingdom that Jesus came to establish. We have to state, without mincing words, that there is an inseparable bond between our faith and the poor." (Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, 48)
In the same document, this time quoting St. John Paul II, Pope Francis adds:
"God shows the poor “his first mercy”. This divine preference has consequences for the faith life of all Christians, since we are called to have “this mind… which was in Jesus Christ” (Phil 2:5)." (Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, 198)
Yet, if God's preferential option for the poor seems obvious when we look to the Scriptures and the words of the Popes, perhaps when we look at the ordering of our society, even the society of the Church, the young man's question does not look quite so out-of-place. What efforts do we see among Christians to manifest God's priority for those of low degree?
The letter of St. James, in our second reading, takes aim at Christians who fail to treat the poor with the dignity they deserve:
Now suppose a man comes into your synagogue, beautifully dressed and with a gold ring on, and at the same time a poor man comes in, in shabby clothes, and you take notice of the well-dressed man, and say, ‘Come this way to the best seats’; then you tell the poor man, ‘Stand over there’ or ‘You can sit on the floor by my foot-rest.’ Can’t you see that you have used two different standards in your mind, and turned yourselves into judges, and corrupt judges at that? (James 2.2-4)
The fact that St. James is writing this is important because he must have been responding to something which was a real problem in the Church. The New Testament writers were not seeking to address imaginary, hypothetical problems in their letters. Rather, they were responding to and correcting the challenges and the problems that they saw. This suggests that this introduction of a distinction between the well-dressed wealthy and the dirty, smelly poor was something which St. James had seen.
And is it not something we see in our world today? I would like to think that if a scruffy, 'gentleman of the road' turned up in our Church today; we'd all be competing to welcome him, as Christ; wanting to sit near him and speak to him after Mass... but I am not certain of it. And how would it be if a homeless person turned up at our work or our place of business?
These are provocative questions, and they are not looking for easy answers - the problems of poverty, particularly extreme poverty, are nothing, if not complex. But, as Christians, we cannot simply look away because it is hard.
Listen, my dear brothers: it was those who are poor according to the world that God chose, to be rich in faith and to be the heirs to the kingdom which he promised to those who love him. (James 2.5)
It may be tempting to think that the solution is to find some sort of programme, or put together some sort of plan, to help people less well off than ourselves. However, that would be imprudent. In the Church there to too much 'go-go' and not enough 'come-come' (cf. Fulton Sheen). My intention, here, is not to drive people into activity, but to encourage thought and reflection. The extent to which we have come to have a care for the poor is a kind of test, which can show me how much I am listening to the Word; how much I have interiorised the teaching of Jesus.
In the Gospel, we read of Jesus' cure of a deaf man. There are people today who wonder why Jesus does not do those kinds of healings in our time. Are there not people with incurable deafness today, who are in as much need of a miracle as that man? And there are others who say that if they saw such miracles, then they would believe in Jesus.
But, the question is would they really? We saw a couple of weeks ago, how after having seen many of His miracles, the people walked away from Jesus when they found His teaching not to their liking. Miracles do not necessarily make people attentive to Jesus' Word.
The reality is that miracles do still happen - but they happen far more frequently in parts of the world where people are materially destitute and rich in faith - where they are open to the Word of God. And this is the fundamental answer to my young man's question. The real blessing, the real manifestation of God's love and preference is found in souls that are open to His Word. For this is real wealth - to be in possession of the eternal riches that come from knowing Jesus Christ, personally.
How familiar are you with Jesus' Word? What place do the Scriptures have in your life, and in mine? Are we attentive to His voice, or, are we afflicted with spiritual deafness?
If I had a pound for every time I have been told, even by Christians, that Jesus thinks something flat contrary to what He says in the Gospel, I would be a very wealthy priest. And I can only conclude that the Christians who say such things are unfamiliar with the New Testament; that they have not sufficiently allowed themselves to hear the Word of God; that their hearts have remained deaf to the voice of Jesus Christ.
We are so privileged, today, that the Scriptures are available in so many different forms: books in every language, audiobooks, ebooks, braille. We really do have no excuse for not knowing the living Word of God, and if we are serious about following Christ we need to make it a daily part of our experience. For, what happens when we do, is that it begins to go down deep inside us. His Word sinks down into our subconscious and becomes within us a fountain of spiritual wisdom. It changes us, heals us of our spiritual deafness and stimulates us to spiritual growth.
- We begin to see sin as Jesus sees it - a destructive force, sapping our inner life.
- The desire within us to love God grows.
- Our hunger for the sacraments increases, as we can see more clearly our need for God.
- And finally, our love for the poor begins to show through, as we become sensitive to the place that they have in His heart.
How I wish your bearing and conversation were such that, on seeing or hearing you, people would say: This man reads the life of Jesus Christ. (The Way, #2)
Would that that be true of you and me, brothers and sisters; then truly we could say that Jesus has done miracles again in our day - for ears of the spiritually deaf then have become unsealed, and the dumb begun to speak.
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