On the Side of the Poor<\/a><\/em>, published about 3 years ago).\u00a0 But who do I talk to about this?\u00a0 No one.<\/p>\nIf I do, it will likely be my good friend in the US, lives in Vermont, like me a \u201cmissionary kid\u201d \u2014 we knew each other years ago in Ecuador.\u00a0 But he is now an atheist.\u00a0 Over the last five or six years we\u2019ve exchanged about a letter a week, delving into everything about faith and life and the universe. \u00a0 When I read about your correspondence with this (\u2018lefty\u2019) friend from Brooklyn, I thought right away of my good friend and pen pal.<\/p>\n
My trip to Guatemala was financed by another pen pal \u2014 my cousin, agnostic.\u00a0 Again, about 500 letters exchanged over the last five years.\u00a0 Faith, God, social justice.<\/p>\n
So, it\u2019s pretty lonely sometimes!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I hear you.\u00a0 St. John Chrysostom \u00a0says that if you do not see Christ in the beggar you will not find him in the chalice.\u00a0 The gospel, especially Luke, urges us to see the world through the eyes of the beaten, the losers, the weak, the failures, and the shamed.\u00a0 Jesus takes their part in a peculiar way.\u00a0 He turns ideas of patronage on their heads.\u00a0 Instead of the worldly approach of sucking up to Medicis, Rockefellers, Republican donor bases and Clinton Foundations to live off the largesse of the rich, Jesus tells bizarre parables about dishonest stewards dumped by their patrons who lighten the debts of the poor and then concludes \u201cAnd I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous mammon, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal habitations.\u201d (Lk 16:9).\u00a0 He offers strange investment strategies like \u201cWhen you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your kinsmen or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return, and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.\u201d (Lk 14:12\u201314).<\/p>\n
And the saints take him up on it.\u00a0 St. Lawrence brings out all the human debris of Rome\u2013hookers, winos, beggars, and failures of every sort\u2013and declares them the treasures of the Church.\u00a0 St. John Chrysostom add to the remarks above the shocking observation that the rich exist for the sake of the poor, but the poor exist for the salvation of the rich<\/em>.<\/p>\nThat is a stunning reversal of patronage: the notion that the rich should get down on their knees and lick the feet of the poor lest, in their prayers, the poor condemn them before God Almighty. The idea that, in the Kingdom, God sees in the poor his special favorites and entrusts to them <\/em>the verdict of heaven or hell.\u00a0 Yet what else are we to glean from the parable of the sheep and the goats, in which Jesus announces that the reason the poor have such terrifying power is that he is present in each one of them? What else do we make of such terrifying stories as Lazarus and the Rich Man?\u00a0 Dives\u2019 casual neglect of the beggar Lazarus is, no doubt, couched in all the normal crap we always say in order to neglect the poor (\u201cHe is not the \u2018deserving poor\u2019.\u00a0 He is lazy.\u00a0 Job Creators can\u2019t be expected to contradict the Invisible Hand.\u201d The usual excuses.)\u00a0 But the message is really clear: you should have used the goods you were given to help Lazarus when you had \u2019em, because that why you were given them. Dorothy Day is discovered to just be stating plain fact when she declares that the gospel takes away\u2013forever\u2013the right to distinguish between the deserving and undeserving poor. We rediscover that \u201cThe man who will not work, shall not eat\u201d is not written in Paul\u2019 first epistle to the Republicans, but to the Christians of Thessalonica who sought to neglect their call to do good works to the poor by sky-gazing for the Second Coming. But with respect to those outside the Household of Faith, the gospel command is simply and indiscriminate: \u201cGive to him who begs from you, and do not refuse him who would borrow from you.\u201d (Mt 5:42). Period. No exceptions.<\/p>\nIn the US, there is almost a complete schism between our Eucharistic piety and our piety toward the poor.\u00a0 One is seen as \u201cconservative\u201d and the other as \u201cliberal\u201d or even radical. For instance, your mention of the book by Gutierrez and Muller (and my mention of your mention) will make you a marked man in right wing circles. \u00a0\u201cTypical left wing crap from FrancisChurch!\u201d is the cry. \u00a0But here\u2019s the thing: Muller was made Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, not by Francis, but by God\u2019s Rottweiler himself: Pope Benedict XVI.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s because the ridiculous notion that love of orthodoxy and love of the poor are opposites is a nonsense schism in the gospel, like asking which blade on the scissors does the cutting.\u00a0 If you reject the one, you will sooner or later reject the other.\u00a0 We have to find a way to recover and reunite both, not pit them against each other.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know how to do that.\u00a0 But talking about it is a good start.\u00a0 You do well to try, even if it does mean having to write to faraway people to do it.\u00a0 I\u2019m sorry it causes you suffering.\u00a0 But know that your heart is in the right place and there are a growing number of people who are listening to Pope Francis and noodling this problem.\u00a0 It\u2019s actually a hopeful time. \u00a0Because Francis is making the issue unignorable, to the consternation of Dives, but the joy of the Holy Spirit.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
He writes: I just came across your \u201chonest and heartfelt exchange with a friend who feels l have changed\u201d \u2014 on Patheos.\u00a0 It resonates, thank you.\u00a0 In many ways this has been my experience as well.\u00a0 So I wanted to write a short note to encourage you. Our parish here in Alberta is very conservative […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[8,374,587],"class_list":["post-96851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-mailbag","tag-pope-francis","tag-the-least-of-these"],"yoast_head":"\n
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