TAKING THE POOR SERIOUSLY
Accustomed to listening to the «beatitudes» as they appear in the Gospel of Matthew, it makes it hard for us Christians in rich countries to read the text that Luke offers us. It seems that this Gospel writer – and more than a few of his readers – belonged to a comfortable class. However far from smoothing out Jesus’ message, Luke presents it in a more provocative manner.
Joined with the «blessings» for the poor, the Gospel writer remembers the «woes» for the rich. «Blessed are the poor… those who now hunger… who now weep». But «woe to you rich… who now are full… who now laugh». The Gospel can’t be heard by all in the same manner. While for the poor it is Good News that invites them to hope, for the rich it’s a warning that calls them to conversion. How to listen to this message in our Christian communities?
Above all, Jesus places us all in the face of the bloodiest reality there is in the world, what most causes suffering, who most reaches God’s heart, what is most present before God’s eyes. A reality that in the rich countries we try to ignore, hiding in a thousand ways the most cruel injustice, of which we are complicit for the most part.
Do we want to keep feeding self-deception or do we want to open our eyes to the reality of the poor? Do we have the will for truth? Will we someday take seriously that immense majority of those who go about malnourished and without dignity, those who have neither voice nor power, those who don’t count in our march toward wellbeing?
We Christians haven’t yet discovered the importance that the poor can have in the story of Christianity. They give us more light than anyone else to see ourselves in our proper truth, they shake up our conscience and invite us to conversion. They can help us to shape the Church of the future more evangelically. They can make us more human: more capable of austerity, solidarity and generosity.
The chasm that separates the rich and the poor keeps growing in an unstoppable way. In the future it will be all the more difficult to present ourselves before the world as Jesus’ Church, ignoring the weakest and most defenseless of the Earth. Either we take the poor seriously or we forget the Gospel. In rich countries it will be all the more difficult to hear Jesus’ warning: «You can’t serve God and Money». It will be unbearable for us.
José Antonio Pagola
Translator: Fr. Jay VonHandorf
