poor

 One day, while I was going through Roxas Boulevard in Manila, traffic was slow, I looked towards the right side of the lane, and my heart sank a what I saw. I saw a little girl. She could not be more than ten years old. When they are very poor, we all know how small they come. Bedraggled and thin, her hair was like a dirty mop on her head. She bent over a canal in front of a five-star hotel. She scooped with her bare hands water from the canal and drank the water very casually. Evidently, she had slaked her thirst.  Glaring evidences of extreme poverty are everywhere, even in the most incongruous of places, like the front of high-rise buildings.

The Church focuses our attention to the appalling conditions of the poor throughout the country. The most squalid conditions are perhaps found in Manila -- in esteros, in holes under bridges, in shanties resting over stagnant waters.

Of what does this speak to us...? Perhaps we have taken the poor for granted, even as Christ Himself said, "The poor you shall always have with you." The message couldn't be more clear: They will always be there, therefore, "To whom much is given, much shall be asked." It is an evangelical counsel. It is implicit in the statement that it is a Christian mandate to share in the burden of the poor. A false notion of our inadequacy to help can lead us to think that we can be excused. It is

chilling to think that we will excuse ourselves and throw the burden on others while the poor suffer day after day, night after night in cold, hunger, and thirst. This is a temptation to be shunned.

 When God created the world, He meant to have it filled with people. Happy people. People who will enjoy His creation and the fruits of the people's creativeness. It is not His intention to make people suffer. Today...the Church is deeply concerned about the plight of the poor. Her social mission is to make the strong rally to the service of the weak and the poor. We are the Church. 

Ecclesiastical authorities can promulgate decrees to pave the way into bringing those below the poverty line into the mainstream of normal Christian life. It is only the response of those who live the evangelical counsels that can give those decrees a meaning.That is what charity is all about.

 I remember a short poem of Catherine de Hueck Doherty, my favorite lay apostle of the poor. She died some years ago. Her little poem says:

 A bell is not a bell till you ring it.

 A song is not a song till you sing it.

 The love in your heart was not put there to stay.

 Love is not love till you give it away.

 Let's make our love for the poor what it really is...by "giving it  away"-- to them.