A few days ago, I wrote of the lack of the work ethic. What I did not elaborate in the post was the downside of the Calvinistic idea that if a person is saved, one of the elect, that person is blessed materially in this world. The entire Protestant heritage is imbued with this falsehood, but if pervades the Western world, or more correctly, America, Great Britain and Ireland, those countries which inherited Calvin's hatred of poverty and symbol of grievous sin. Now, growing up in an area of the Midwest where Catholics still are and always have been since Columbus, the minority religion, the Calvinist idea of the blessed elect was in the very air. Comments from adults and even skewed teaching taught us children that to be poor was not only a great shame on the family, but a curse from God.
Does this sound familiar? How Catholics feel into judging those less fortunate than themselves can only be attributed to this encroachment of the Calvinist idea of the material elect. However, I have seen this heresy grow as the faith of Calvin dwindles on the fact of the earth. Something else is pushing the agenda that poverty is to be eradicated at all costs and is an evil in and of itself.
Christ never said this. Christ Himself chose poverty and the call to radical holiness in the world demands a certain detachment from the things, and more importantly, the status of this world.
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| I do not want to hear about suffering! I do not want to hear about the poor! |
How many times do the Gospel writers quote Christ and His parables about not preferring the rich man to the poor man. But, the politics of envy contradict Christ. And, the socialist and communist agendas hate both the rich and the poor. How convenient.
But, what is worse, are the Catholics who hate the poor and do not want to admit such people into their society, homes, conversations. It is as if poverty were some sort of disease, like the measles, which one can catch from a poor person. They do not want to hear about poverty.
And, yet, Mary, the Queen of the Universe married a poor man and bore the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity in a stable. I am convinced that people really do not believe this, or somehow have brought antiseptics and central heating into the cold, dank and dirty place where Christ was born. I know a couple who are probably the holiest people on earth I can call friends. They live in poverty. They never have new clothes and eat the same thing every day-cabbage, turnips, fish, potatoes, tea. They have a car which is twenty-two years old and runs because the head of the house is a genius at mechanical things. They rent a house which is partly over a pub and put up with smoke, horrible language and music, until early hours. They always wanted their own house, but now, as they aregrowing older, they are seeing this may not happen, ever.
And yet, they are content. They go to daily Mass and pray the fifteen decades of the rosary daily. They fast for souls and pray for the dead. They do missionary work quietly and consistently. They help those poorer than themselves. For such humans is heaven waiting.
But, they are judged mercilessly by others. They are considered low class, unhealthy, uneducated. They are scorned and thought odd. They are judged as having some horrible sin or failure in their lives which must account for their lack of financial success. Their fellow Catholics see them with the eyes of Calvinism.
Even their families betray them and think them “too poor and too proud”, that is, taking pride in their poverty. This is not true. They have no pride, only a simply humility which shows that they know God and God knows them.
And yet, people prefer others to their company. No one gives them meat to enhance their diet. No one notices that they use firewood and not their central heating. No one notices because the poor are invisible. And, already, I know that some of the readers will be saying, “Why didn't the man do something else besides carpentry?“Why don't they move?” “Why doesn't she get a job? And, why doesn't the family help” Simply because he wants to live near his old mother until she dies and because the building industry is at a stand-still. Because they cannot afford to move, because the woman was ill and whether one believes it or not, people who have been ill, especially with cancer, do not get hired. And, some families either do not help or cannot help. It doesn't matter what the reasons are, these good people are very poor. Judge not...
Mother Teresa made the dying of Calcutta visible to the world. No one makes the poor visible, unless there is an underlying, heretical agenda. That the poor remain invisible is the largest sin of the Catholic Church. And, they are in our midst, daily. Only, we do not see them. We do not want to see them. Our blindness is our judgement and death.
It is not for governments to help the poor, but for the Catholics who can to do so. Such is the call of holiness for those who have riches. Such are the words of Christ.
What does it take to give to the poor? It takes humility to see that someone actually has a need that one may not have, and that there is a duty to respond. It takes humility to reach out and be involved with someone different, someone vulnerable, someone outside one's comfort zone, someone who does dress like you or talk like you. One must become “personal” to help the real poor. Throwing money at charities is not what Christ had in mind.
This Lent, I challenge my fellow Catholics not to just see the poor in the desperate third world countries, but to see the poor down the street, waiting for the bus, sitting near you in Church at Mass. We shall all be judged on what we saw and what we did not want to see, and therefore ignored. Could it possibly be that God allows poverty for our holiness? Could it be that the poor are always with us for our own benefit so that we come to see Christ in all men and women? The answers are yes and yes.