My Sisters And Brothers in Christ,

In his biography of St. Francis, St. Bonaventure relates an incident in Francis’ life:

That most Christian pauper saw Christ’s image in all the poor, and when he met them, he not only generously gave them even the necessities of life that had been given them but he believed that these should be given them as if theirs by right. It happened once that a poor man met him on his return from Siena, when because of an illness he was wearing a short mantle over his habit. When his kind eye observed the man’s misery, he said to his companion: “We should return this mantle to this poor man because it is his. For we got it on loan until we should find someone poorer than ourselves.” But his companion, considering the need of his devoted father, obstinately refused, lest Francis provide for another by neglecting himself. But Francis said: “I believe that the great Almsgiver will charge me with theft if I do not give what I have to one who needs it more.”(1)

The celebration of the Solemnity of St. Francis impels me to write to you about this Poor Man of Assisi and what he – his insightful life, example and writings – teaches us concerning the dignity of poor men, poor women and poor children who live in our cities and towns, people who often knock on our doors and extend their hands to us for help. The name of Francis of Assisi has ever been associated with the poor and with poverty. He is called the “Little Poor Man,” and, for love of the Lord Jesus who made Himself poor for us (cf. 2 Cor. 8:9), made the most wretched poverty of the outcast leper, the very pursuit of his life.

Francis was a man of gentle spirit and poetic insight, but he was no romantic. The key to Francis’ realizing his fraternal relationship with everything created can be found in the way the young Francis changed the movement and direction of his life. This son of the growing mercantile class, this singer of songs and raconteur of knightly deeds, changed his way of behaving and relating to people. Everyone began to experience in Francis the union of messenger and message – the fusion of the man and the Gospel, and the truest imitator of Christ – the whole Christ.

Adolf Holl captures this aspect of the Poverello well:

After Francis no one ever took Jesus with such stubborn literalness – or to such stunning effect. Francis wanted to own absolutely nothing except a pair of drawers, a hooded robe, and a rope around his belly. Just as with Jesus, few people could imitate this sort of life. Nevertheless, in a way that can be compared only with Jesus, Francis has remained a haunting figure, and not just for Catholics. Somehow Francis awakens in us a kind of pain that draws us to him, a feeling of nostalgia.

…(Francis was) a strange individual: an obedient rebel, an earnest clown, an unworldly activist, an ascetical master of the arts of life, a restless wise man, a convivial penitent, a humble authoritarian. Behind these contradictions in Francis’ character one discovers an inexorable resolution, a refusal to play games or give ground. Francis studied something you never learn in the Boy Scouts or the Social Democrats in public schools or Christian homes: the science of social climbing – downward.(2)

THE GOSPEL FRANCIS PREACHED

Matthew’s Gospel records the truth which Jesus spoke when he reminded us:

The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me (Mt. 26:11).

Indeed, the poor are with us and will continue to be, despite the best efforts of dreamers and activists to rid the world of poverty, and the best efforts of many of us to insulate ourselves from the presence of the poor in our lives. What continues to be difficult for all of us is the ability to discover the face of Christ in their presence. We fear to look! We are afraid to look because we might discover our Lord as near as the man or woman who calls to us in need. Our unwillingness to see reflects the timeless question of the Pharisee: “Who then is my brother or sister? My Neighbor?” (Luke 10:29). In our lack of response to the cry of a brother or sister, we continue the sin of Cain.

Yet, if we are consecrated to the life of the Gospel and committed to allowing Christ to shape the ethical directions of our lives, we must not only hope to see the face of Christ in the presence of the poor, but also seek His face in poverty itself. We share in the priesthood of Jesus Christ which manifested itself in worshipful praise of God and caring service of “the least among us” (Matthew 25:45). Our personal and liturgical prayer continues that priestly praise of God, as does our service to the poor, by which the Holy Spirit moves our love for the Father into zeal for the welfare of others. The priesthood of Christ reminds us that, when all is said and done, it will not be how well we have cared for ourselves that counts, but how much we have been alive for others.

We must allow ourselves to be evangelized by the poor. The poor unmask our blindness. The poor reveal to us the nakedness of our shame. They teach us dangerous truths, frightening truths – that our souls are in peril if we exchange the truth of God for the lie of comfortable existence. We do, in fact, exchange the glory of the invisible God for the passing idolatry of our own momentary existence and its hungers and desires, when we worship the work of our own hands, the security and prosperity of our too comfortable abodes (Romans 1:21-25).

We Americans have grown up in what John Kenneth Galbraith has termed “The Affluent Society,” and have grown to expect what he describes as a “high standard of living (which) consists, in considerable measure, in arrangements for avoiding muscular energy, for increasing sensual pleasure, and enhancing caloric intake above any conceivable nutritional requirement.”(3) We endlessly, compulsively, and obsessively seek what we do not need and what we soon discover we scarcely enjoy. Our consumption is excessive and oppressive and feeds most of all on fear because it admits no possible satiation. There can be no end to hunger when all our wants become needs. The most affluent become the most needy of all in such a situation.

It is the power of the poor to give us a new context, a clear reflection, and an opportunity to recognize the bankruptcy of our treasury of so-called “affluence.”

Christ calls us, with the voice of the poor, to cherish the helpless, to endow the dispossessed, and to educate the ignorant. The chasms that exist between them and those of us who are poor in other ways can only be bridged when there is a bounty of goods accompanied by a bounty of love. However, isn’t this the quality of love which Christ has shown us? Doesn’t the abundance so many of us enjoy flow from God’s generosity, manifest in our talents and our aspirations? The poor call forth from us that which we might want, but do not need. They keep the key which unlocks the coffers of our hearts.

Matthew’s Gospel is very pointed:

When the Son of Man comes as King and all the angels with Him, He will sit on His royal throne, and the people of all nations will be gathered before Him. Then He will divide them into two groups, just as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the righteous people at His right and the others at His left (Mt. 25:31-33).

When we ask ourselves on what basis is this separation of the Righteous and the Accursed made, the Word of God continues:

I tell you, whenever you did it for one of the least of these, you did it for me…I tell you, whenever you refused to help of these least important ones, you refused to help me. These, then, will be sent off to eternal punishment, but the righteous will go to eternal life (Mt. 25:40,45-46).

There is an inspiring story from the life of St. Francis which serves as a graphic commentary on this section from Matthew’s Gospel:

Whenever he beheld poverty standing before him, he beheld Christ in spirit, and forthwith the Knight of Poverty was filled with profound sympathy and compassion. For this reason he could not bear to hear others speak or judge harshly of the poor. It happened on one occasion that a Friar uttered these harsh words to a beggar who had begged alms of him: “Take heed that thou dost not feign poverty, whilst thou art in fact rich!” Francis was deeply grieved when hearing these words spoken. He reproved the Friar severely and commanded him to take off his habit in the presence of the beggar, to kiss his feet, and to implore his forgiveness. He then added: “Whoever insults a poor man does injury to Christ Himself, whose noble image he bears; for He has become poor in this world for our sake.”(4)

THE CHURCH STRIVES TO LIVE THE GOSPEL

Our Catholic people have struggled to respond to this Gospel mandate. Whenever you find the Catholic community, you will find hospitals, orphanages, halfway homes, and homes for people in various circumstances, so that the helpless might have a place where their hurts are heard. State Legislatures, the Congress of the United States, and a variety of governmental agencies are witness to the efforts of the Church to persuade society at large to endow the dispossessed through just legislation and the support of public works. Our Church has recognized the importance of knowledge, and for generations has expended her resources on the education of the unlearned. Teaching has always been, and remains, one of the Church’s most important apostolic works. The list of “second” collections, the activities of Catholic Charities and Catholic Relief Services, the many missionary societies of the Church testify that charitable outreach continues among us, faithful to the apostolic tradition.

Such ministerial efforts are fostered by the Catholic people of North Georgia. The ministry of education, the numerous apostolates of Catholic Social Services, Personal Care Homes, The Village of St. Joseph, Catholic Housing Initiatives, and offices serving the needs of minorities, Saint Vincent de Paul societies, Our Lady of Perpetual Help Cancer Home, Saint Joseph’s and Saint Mary’s hospitals, the hunger centers in our parish churches, etc., all these and more represent the commitment of our Catholic people “to see the face of Christ in the distressing disguise of the poor” (Mother Teresa).

Our fidelity to the support of these ministries is a measure of our commitment to the priestly service we share in Christ. When we support these ministries of the Church, to whatever extent, with our time, our talent, and our money, we are affirming our own priesthood in Christ. If we allow ourselves to be transformed by the needs of the poor, and if we strengthen our resolve by our celebration of the Sacraments and our life in the Church, the Spirit will lead us into personal awareness of and an intimate involvement with Christ’s poor. The Good Samaritan, in our persons, will walk the streets and highways of Georgia.

Bishop Kenneth Untener of Saginaw, Michigan recently noted:

The poor are often invisible…the poor don’t belong to councils or committees, they aren’t on invitation lists, they don’t always go to church, and they don’t bump into us at the mall or the supermarket…they aren’t in our same networks. To find the poor you must go out of your way.(5)

My Brothers and sisters, we cannot hide, either in the material comfort of our homes, or in the spiritual peace of our parish churches. Christ calls us forth:

• in fidelity to the missionary heritage of our Catholic faith;
• in fidelity to the “continuity of compassion” which keeps our faith alive in an apathetic and self-centered world;
• in fidelity to our own basic hunger for personal salvation.

Let us learn, therefore, to be men and women of wisdom and to honor Christ as He desires…Give Him the honor prescribed in His law by giving your riches to the poor. For God does not want golden vessels but golden hearts.

-St. John Chrysostom

(1) Cf. E. Cousins, Bonaventure: The Soul’s Journey into God; The Tree of Life; The Life of St. Francis, New York; Paulist, 1978, p. 254.

(2) Adolf Holl, The Last Christian, A Biography of Francis, translated by Peter Heinegg, Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York, 1980, pp. 2-3.

(3) Quoted in Thomas Dubay, Happy Are the Poor, p. 84.

(4) Hilarin Felder, O.F.M., Cap, The Ideals of Saint Francis, translated by Berchmans Bittle, O.F.M., Cap., Franciscan Herald Press, Chicago, Illinois, 1982, p. 273-274.

(5) Bishop Kenneth Untener, quoted in Catholic Trends, Vol. 21; no.25.