A pastor bankrupt his parish giving away wood to the poor to bring warmth to their homes in bitter winter. When he had no money left, he sold the rectory Chippendale dining room furniture for more wood. He was ridiculed by his peers for being a bad administrator. He was embraced by Christ on his death. We must accept it as a given that not only does Christ believe in life after death but also He believes just as strongly in life before death. Furthermore, He believes not only in bread for the poor but roses too. Do check today’s Gospel. Mark clearly tells us that Jesus sent the apostles on a two-fold mission. They must preach repentance for people’s sins. But in addition they must cure them of their physical ills and wants. Mark in verse 13 tells us today that the twelve did precisely that.
Such a job definition is the reverse of the oft-told tale that Jesus is preaching pie in the sky in the bye and bye. The Teacher is interested not only in souls but bodies as well. He is anxious both to develop the spiritual life of people as well as their humanity. To say otherwise would be equal to presenting a counterfeit and plastic Christ to the world. He is in the business of saving people – body and soul. It is quite true that the Master said, “The poor you will always have with you.” But, in the words of Edward McGlynn, He never said that you and I were to do nothing to help them. Our Leader reminds us hunger is one disease that is 100% curable. God, said one cynic, must have loved the poor.
He made so many of them. Arguably He did so to make it easier for you and me to get into Paradise. We accomplish that by holding out a loaf of bread and cherry jam to them along with some substantive assistance. Nowadays that substantive aid goes by the name of empowerment. We must help them to build ovens and grow cherries. It cannot be said that all Catholics accept this as a given. Many do not. I know of one American Catholic college where students bitterly indicted their chaplain in the school paper. They said that they came to the Liturgy to worship God and be inspired. They were fed up with hearing from him about the poor. The latter were living by the thousands in the neighborhood around the college. The priest replied, “I am sorry about that. I did not write the rulebook.” Asked one sophomore sweetly, “What rulebook?” “The Gospels,” he replied.
If you read through the Gospels, one discovers quickly that the Nazarene spent more hours assisting the great unwashed than He did about speaking of His Father. What would happen if the reader tears out of the Gospels the pages that speak of the needy and His assistance of them? Well, we wind up with a book so abridged that no publisher would publish it. Many rabbis of Christ’s time said religion consists primarily in sacrifice. Some scribes would correct them and say that religion is concerned principally with the Law. And the Christ would buy neither definition. According to Him, it consists in love of God and one’s neighbor – especially the ones who finds themselves with empty bellies.
Christ’s Church must belong primarily to the down and out. If the opposite is the case, the Church has seriously violated its charter. Furthermore, when the Church favors the poor over the middle class, we should not complain like the college students of the above. After all, must of us in the United States are the direct descendants of the very poor. Some of us are their children. Or at the very least their grandchildren. My mother as a child owned no shoes. Furthermore, when the preacher turns us upside down to shake money out of our pockets for the poor, we should not moan. Rather, we should learn to say, “This is exactly what the Church should be doing. And, if it were not, I should be kicking and screaming till it began to do so.” I found these reflective lines in the Canterbury cathedral of Augustine, Anselm, and Thomas a Becket. “Poverty is carrying your water four miles.
Poverty is being old at 40 and dead at 45. Poverty is having no crops to scare birds away from. Poverty is having no money to worry about.” Of the forty two million without health insurance in the United States, eight million are children. This translates into prolonged illness, skipping life saving medical exams, and inadequate medical care. Christ waits impatiently.