Poverty:
the way of evangelization
in the spirit of Pope Francis
The option for the poor principally and primarily has a Christological motivation. Concerning Jesus Christ, whom the Father sent «in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin» in order to «condemn sin in the flesh» (Rm 8, 3), the apostle Paul says that «for you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich» (2 Cor8, 9). In virtue of his poverty and humiliation, we, poor beggars before God, creatures destined for death, become participants of his message of universal salvation and we are clothed anew with the glory of God. Moved by the conciliar constitution Gaudium et Spes, the Latin-American theology of liberation has widened this concept to the entire Church: «For theirs is a community composed of men. United in Christ, they are led by the Holy Spirit in their journey to the Kingdom of their Father and they have welcomed the news of salvation which is meant for every man. That is why this community realizes that it is truly linked with mankind and its history by the deepest of bonds» (GS 1).
The Church is really present everywhere and faithful to the mission received from Jesus, namely, to announce the gospel to the poor (Lk 7, 22). In fulfilment of her universal mission to all men on earth until the end of time, the Church is not governed by honors, riches and earthly powers, but rather she uniquely seeks «to carry forward the work of Christ under the lead of the befriending Spirit. And Christ entered this world to give witness to the truth, to rescue and not to sit in judgment, to serve and not to be served» (GS 3).
A poor Church for the poor
The aspiration expressed by Pope Benedict XVI that the Church orient herself, not by the standards of the world, but by those of the Gospel, is taken up by Pope Francis in Evangeliigaudium when he writes, «I desire a poor Church for the poor» (EG 198). The “no” to the worldly spirit (cf. EG 93-97) is countered by a “yes” to the challenge of a missionary spirit (cf. EG 78-80). When Jesus calls blessed «the poor in spirit» and promises them the Kingdom of heaven (cf. Mt 5, 3), he does not open the path to an irresponsible spiritualization and utopic idealization of his Gospel. To be poor in spirit means radically conforming oneself to the intentions and fate of Christ. It follows that the spiritual man, in contrast to the worldly man, readily listens to the what is suggested to him by the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ (cf. 1 Cor2, 14). A disciple of Christ must not bind his heart to passing riches, to the fancies of power and worldly honors. He has been liberated from false idols in order to serve others with all his material goods and all the talents of his spirit and mind in order to become like Jesus, «a man for others» (Dietrich Bonhoeffer). This is the authentic freedom given to us by Christ (cf. Gal 5, 1). This attitude of poverty in spirit understood as freedom in Christ likenscouples who are married in the Lord, who justly preoccupy themselves with the material well-being of the family, to those Christians who have professed the vow of poverty. This charism of voluntary and lived poverty refers to dependence upon God for all things and to solidarity with the poor, who find themselves in the condition of material and spiritual need. Beyond the social and ethical barriers, believers are united in Christ and base their hope solely upon the one and triune God who, by means of the Church, continues in history his work of redemption and liberation, until its fulfillment at the end of time.
The Church and all of us, her members, are constantly subject to the temptation to give in to the ways of the world as a well-organized spiritual, social, and indispensable institution, in order to obtain the recognition of the powerful and those who form public opinion. The structures of the Church, her cultural and charitable efforts and her patrimony accordingly run the risk of becoming, by means which should be, ends by which she allows herself to be dominated. This is the ugly spirit of worldliness and of the desire to please men more than God. Pope Francis never tires of guarding himself from these things. Jesus promised to send us the help of the Father. The Spirit of God is «the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him; you know him, for he dwells with you, and will be in you» (Jn14, 17).
For this reason, without falling into the opposite extreme, which consists in a spiritualization and idealization of the faith and of the Church, we must overcome the crisis of relativism and secularism which has infested some sectors of the Church. Pessimism and cynicism are overcome by means of a new confidence in divine Providence, which in the end will direct all things to a better end. Instead of activism and technical proficiency, we need the personal love of Jesus Christ and an adhesion to the faith animated by the Spirit. Also, when external forces are strongly against our dogmatic convictions and our religious practices, often secretly we attach ourselves to economic security or derivations of institutional power or our social position, instead of giving our lives in the mission for others. «Do not allow ourselves to be robbed of missionary enthusiasm» (EG 80), exhorts Pope Francis.
The Church goes forward by means of the Gospel when she is poor in the human nature of Christ in order to become rich in his divine nature. She allows herself to be evangelized by Christ in the poor and carries the gospel of Christ to the poor (cf. EG 198). The iceberg of the worldly spirit must be melted in the fire of love for Christ who lives in the hungry and the thirsty, by the warmth of all of the spiritual and corporal works of mercy. The Church fulfills her mission of making Christ present in her midst by means of martyria, leitourgia, and diakonia, with the announcement of the Gospel to those who are materially, humanly, and spiritually needy but also to those who thirst for righteousness, love, and eternal life in God.
The mandate of evangelization
By becoming incarnate, Jesus Christ took upon himself the poverty of being a creature in all is facets. We should not limit ourselves to the material, economic, and political superficialities of poverty. As Pope Francis writes in his preface to the book Povera per ipoveri. La missionedellaChiesa (Poor for the poor. The mission of the Church), which I wrote with Guastavo Gutierrez upon this topic, poverty in the most authentic sense is nothing other than a metaphor for our contingency. As creatures, we present ourselves before God with empty hands. But these empty hands, together with our open spirit, are given to us from God and it is to God that we extend them. Not humiliated or offended by our dependence upon the Father, but with joy and gratitude, we receive from Him our daily bread. Because we are created for Him, our thirst for the true and for love is never left unquenched. He is the Bread come down from Heaven. He gives himself to us as the food and drink of eternal life. On account of this, the passing nature of earthly things does not lead us into a tragic existentialism. Our earthly life is enriched by participation in the truth and love of God in creation, in the story of redemption, and in the fullness of eternity. Instead of the pessimism, melancholy, and nostalgia of deathas taught by Schopenhauer, we live in hope which «does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us» (Rm 5, 5). Not existential suffering, but the evangeliigaudium,the joy of the Gospel, is the PIN – Personal Identification Number – of Christians.
Being men of faith in Jesus Christ means always leading a Eucharistic life. Christ did not assume human nature merely in the abstract, but did so in the historic concreteness of its slavery and disfigurement caused by sin. Saint Paul formulated this entrance into sin in the life of the Man-God, Jesus,with all its destructive weight, with the words which surpass all rational thinking: «For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God» (2 Cor5, 11). All that is hateful to God, disregarding of the rights of man, a reduction to slavery and utilization of the other, a refusal to offer aid, and a betrayal of fraternal love is thus wrapped up in the mystery of love and mercy in such a way that we become sons of God, brothers and sisters of the Lord. The Lamb of God takes upon himself the weight of the sins of the world, suffers and defeats them. He, who suffers in his person every kind of destructive violence, overcomes and defeats evil and suffering with his non-violent response. His cross becomes the symbol of hope and the sacrament of reconciliation of men with God and among themselves. He makes us participants of a new creation, in order that«we might die to sin and live to righteousness» (1 Pt 2, 24).
By following Christ, we understand that Christianity is not a Weltanschauung, an elite and philanthropic vision of the world, associated with a socially and useful and pleasing humanitarian practice accompanied by personal religious and emotional experiences, a species of a narcissistic drunkenness of a self-satisfied spirit. It is not the realization of oneself, of his interests, and of his passions, but the industriousness of service of the Kingdom of God which is the intrinsic form and exterior rule of being a Christian: «Present your bodies as a living sacrifice (logikèlatréia), holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship» (Rm 12, 1). Our faith in Christ is the point of departure for a gradual death of the old man and a daily walking beside the risen Lord; it is a journey which lasts through the entirety of life. «I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me» (Gal 2, 20). The flight from the real world in order to take refuge in the ideal world, the refusal of personal and public responsibility in the nostalgia of lost paradises and golden ages, and the privatization of the Christian message in the hope of the world to come all contrast with that which God has revealed in creation and redemption. They do not reconcile with the gifts that have been given to us through His Son and through His Spirit. Christ has defeated the world of sin and evil, of suffering and death. He did not come unto his own in order to demonstrate the infinite distance between God and the world, but to live in the midst of us and to be near to us, to remain with us, He who is God-with-us. «But to all who received him, he gave power to become children of God» (Jn 1, 12).
Only by departing from Jesus Christ can we recognize, by the light of the divine call of man, the full economic, political, and social extent of the need and of the misery of those who lead a life in any way below the standard of human dignity. Millions of people, our brothers and sisters, lack the things necessary to clothe, feed, and shelter themselves, are deprived of any assistance when they are sick or when they become elderly, are denied access to the culture goods, and are not recognized as citizens with equal political rights, finding themselves degraded to the level of instruments of the greed of the powerful who aspire to the monopoly of influence, honors, and riches. We think of the countless number of persons who are left victims of injustice and violence: victims of war and genocide, those reduced to slavery and abuse, crime and terrorism. The story of humanity reads at times like an insult of evildoers who make fun of the just: «where is your God?» (Ps 42, 11). They are our brothers and sisters, creatures in flesh and blood, who are robbed of their human dignity. Before this ocean of tears and blood which inundates the story of humanity, no one can escape the sense of despair, nihilism, or protest against God and destiny, if God himself had not done justice to the victims of every unjust violence with the cross and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ, thereby manifesting the «justice of God by means of faith in Jesus Christ» (Rm 3, 22) proper to those who have lost whatever dignity. The universal judgment is the victory of love over hate.
In the face of the tragic failure of the modern ideologies of progress and of the attempt of a self-redemption in the earthly paradises of capitalism and socialism, or of every «humanism without God», the essential questions formulated in Gaudium et Spes resound with new intensity: «what is man? What is this sense of sorrow, of evil, of death, which continues to exist despite so much progress? What purpose have these victories purchased at so high a cost? What can man offer to society, what can he expect from it? What follows this earthly life?» (GS 10).
The Church does not erect an umpteenth monument to self-redemption, juxtaposed to the innumerable programs of betterment of the world and to attempts to explain the world men have developed throughout time and that are destined to fail. Her faith is not founded on man, but on God. By word and by her actions, the Church gives witness to the faith which has been entrusted to her by God who has revealed himself to man. In fact, the Church believes «that Christ, who died and was raised up for all, can through His Spirit offer man the light and the strength to measure up to his supreme destiny. Nor has any other name under heaven been given to man by which it is fitting for him to be saved. She likewise holds that in her most benign Lord and Master can be found the key, the focal point and the goal of man, as well as of all human history» (GS 10). By the light of Christ, therefore, the Church pursues her mission, which consists in seeking men to help them understand the mystery of man and to participate in the search for solutions to the problems of our time.
In announcing the Gospel of Christ to the poor and to the oppressed, participating in the construction of a free, united, and just society with respect to the inalienable dignity of every single human creature, the Church follows in the footsteps of Christ, who «carried out the work of redemption in poverty and persecution» (LG 8). Although he was God, He humbled himself and assumed our nature of being servants. For this reason, God exalted him (cf. Phil 2, 6-11). And we await the Savior, the Lord, who will come again as judge and transform our lowly bodies so as to conform to his glorious body (cf. Phil 3, 20-21). The glory of God is manifested in the figure of the Son who came to serve. The sacrum commericium is nothing other than an exchange of poverty and riches between man and God. In Jesus Christ an intimate coherence is obvious between the theologiacrucisand the theologiaglroiæ, whether in Christian anthropology or in ecclesiology, because Christ is for us the Crucified and, at the same time, the Risen One. The unknown and unnamable God is made known and allows himself to be called Abba – Father – in the Spirit and through the Son (cf. Rm 8,15), for we are not only called sons of God, but so we are indeed (cf. 1 Jn 3, 1). Herein lies our condition together with the eschatological dynamic that determines our place in the world and in relation to the mystery of redemption and of communion of life with God: «For creation waits with eager longer […] to be set free from its bondage to decay and to obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God» (Rm 8, 19-21). In the face of the Church there is a reflection of the glory of God, who allows all men to be illumined by the light of the Gospel of Christ. Clearly, however, this does not mean «misleading riches» (cf. Mk 4, 13ff), the glow of earthly glory, of luxury, and of power. The Church follows her Lord. When she suffers and is persecuted, it is then, truly, that the «glory of the Lord» (Lk 2, 9) and the «fullness of his grace» (Jn 1, 16) shines in the cross.
The Church, inasmuch as she is a visible community inserted into the world needs material goods only for the completion of her mission and «not to seek earthly glory, but to proclaim, even by its own example, humility and self-sacrifice. As Christ did, […] so also the Church encompasses with love all who are afflicted with human suffering and in the poor and afflicted sees the image of its poor and suffering founder. It does all it can to relieve their need and in them it strives to serve Christ» (LG 8). However, while Christ, founder and head of the Church was holy and free from sin, «the Church, embracing in its bosom sinners, at the same time holy and always in need of being purified, always follows the way of penance and renewal» (LG 8).