“When
I give food to the poor, they call me a saint.
When
I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist.”
-
Dom Hélder Pessoa Câmara
One of my professors in the Studium during my years in philosophy used
to say, “If we turn around to find out the face of our neighbor we are expected
to serve and love as ourselves, we will find out that 9 out of 10 chances that
face would be that of a Filipino. 7 out of 10 chances, he or she would be
a poor Filipino, in need of whatever it is we can spare in love and justice.”
Indeed, nowadays, we can consider poverty as one of the most depressing and
saddest realities in our country. In our ordinary day-to-day life
especially in the Metropolis, usually, we encounter poor people, both young and
old, in the streets, churches, parks, markets, other public places, and even in
our doorsteps or information lobbies. Some of them, if not most, are not
just simply poor but even miserably poor. Worst, these poor people in our
midst increase in number each day. Hence, this problem needs to be
addressed, and as much as possible, with urgency.
My stay in the Dominican Studentate, Santo Domingo Convent in Quezon
City, for almost seven years now, has allowed me to observe and be exposed to
the various people around the vicinity of the convent and the church.
There are rich people living within high walled houses and mansions, and there
are poor people as well, who I think are actually the majority, who live very
difficult lives. Moreover, I was also experienced being exposed and
immersed in the missions where there are a number of poor families, as well as
in the urban poor areas in the very heart of the metro. My heart was
moved by their pitiful situation, and I wonder if these poor still hope to be
liberated from their poverty.
In the Service of the Poor
In our encounter with the poor and depressed, we will discover that
those poor people are suffering. And having seen and heard their great
and unbearable sufferings, we have the tendency to be moved personally with
their situation: we feel compassion in their situation. The first stage
of our commitment to the poor is characterized by compassion. Our
experience of compassion is our starting point. But this needs to develop and
grow.
There are two things which help in the growth and development of
compassion. The first is what we now come to call exposure.
The more we are exposed to the sufferings of the poor, the deeper and more
lasting our compassion become. Some organizations these days arrange
exposure programs and send people off to depressed rural and urban areas to
enable them to see something of the hardships and misery of grinding
poverty. Certainly, nothing can replace immediate contact with pain and
hunger, seeing people in the cold and rain after their makeshift houses have
been bulldozed, destroyed by natural calamities, experiencing the unbearable,
intolerable smells in a slum, seeing children suffering from
malnutrition. Furthermore, information can also be
considered an exposure. We know more than half the world is poor and that
roughly 800 million people in the world do not have enough to eat and in one
way or another are starving. Information of this sort can help us to
become more compassionate.
The second thing that seems to me to be necessary to develop our
compassion is a willingness to allow it to happen. We can put
obstacles in the way of this development by becoming more callous, or saying,
“It’s not my business,” or “I’m in no position to do anything about it.”
This blunts one’s natural compassion for the sufferings of the poor.
As Christians, however, we have a way of allowing our compassion to
develop, a way of nurturing our natural feelings of compassion. We
believe that compassion is a virtue, a grace and indeed a divine
attribute. When we experience compassion we are sharing God’s
compassion. We are sharing what God feels about the world today.
Moreover, our faith enables us to sharpen and deepen our compassion by enabling
us to see the face of Christ in those who are suffering, and to remember that
whatever we do to the least of our brothers and sisters we do to Him.
Ultimately, our compassion will lead to action. At first, our
action will probably be what we generally call relief work:
collecting and distributing food, blankets, clothes or money. Compassion
for the poor might also lead us to a simplification of our lifestyle:
trying to do without luxuries, trying to save money and to give our surplus to
the poor. Nevertheless, this seems that there is nothing extraordinary
about this. It is a long Christian tradition: compassion, almsgiving,
voluntary poverty.
The second stage in our commitment with the poor begins with the gradual
discovery that poverty is a structural problem. We discover
that poverty in the world today is not simply misfortune, bad luck, something
inevitable, due to laziness or ignorance or a lack of development.
Poverty today is the direct result of the political and economic policies of
governments, parties, and big business. In other words, the poverty we
have is not accidental. It has been created; it has been manufactured by
particular policies and systems. This means that poverty is a political
problem, a matter of injustice and oppression.
The discovery of the depth and breadth of poverty in the world leads to
feelings of compassion. Now, the discovery that this poverty is being
imposed upon people by unjust structures and policies leads to feelings of indignation and anger.
We find ourselves getting angry with the rich, with politicians and with
governments. We accuse and blame them for their callousness and inhuman
policies. However, our Christian upbringing makes us feel somewhat
uncomfortable with anger. We feel a little guilty when we get angry with
someone. Is it not sinful to be angry? Should we not be more loving
toward the rich? Should we not be forgiving the politicians their sins –
seventy times seven times? For those of us who want to continue to follow
Christ, our anger and indignation can lead us to a deep spiritual crisis.
The way forward and beyond this crisis is bound up with the discovery of the
spiritual importance of God’s anger.
There are two kinds of anger and indignation. One is an expression
of hatred and selfishness. The other is an expression of love and
compassion. God’s anger, indeed his wrath, is an expression of his love
for the poor and for the rich, for the oppressed and for the oppressor.
How can that be?
All of us have experienced this kind of anger. When our heart goes
out in compassion toward those who suffer, we cannot help but feel angry with
those who make them suffer. The deeper our compassion for the poor, the
stronger our anger for the rich. The two emotions go together as two
sides of the same coin. In fact, we cannot experience the one without the
other, once we know that the rich exploit the poor. And if we have no
feelings of anger, or only very little, then our compassion is simply not
serious. Our anger is an indication of the seriousness of this concern
for the poor. Unless we can experience something of God’s wrath toward
oppressors, our love and service of the poor will not grow and develop.
God’s anger does not mean that he has no love for the rich as
persons. We know from experience that we can get angry with the people we
love. In fact, our anger can be an expression of the seriousness of
our love for them. A mother who discovers her child playing with matches
and about to burn down the house must get angry with the child, not because she
hates the child but precisely because she loves the child so much. Her
anger is an expression of the seriousness of what the child has done and her
concern for the child.
Sometimes, we hear people say “hate the sin but love the sinner.”
Certainly, we can distinguish between love of the sinner and hatred of the
sin. However, this is a notoriously difficult thing to do. The more we
understand, however, that the problem is unjust structures rather than
individuals who can be held personally responsible for poverty, the easier it
is to forgive the individual and hate the system. Individuals are only
marginally guilty because they are only vaguely aware, if at all, of what they
are doing - like the child playing with matches.
As we grow to share more of God’s anger, we find our anger directed more
at the unjust systems than at persons, even if this is sometimes expressed as
anger toward those who represent and perpetuate these systems.
Nevertheless, this does not mean that our anger becomes weaker. Our
compassion can only develop and mature as we learn to take suffering and
oppression seriously enough to get really angry about it.
During this second stage, while we are grappling with the structure and
systems that create poverty and while we are learning to share God’s anger
about them, our actions will be somewhat different from the actions we engaged
in during the first stage. We will want to change the system. We
will want to engage in certain activities that are calculated to bring about
social and political change. Relief work deals with symptoms rather than
causes. Relief work is like curative medicine as opposed to preventive
medicine. What is the point of trying to relieve suffering while the
structures that perpetuate the suffering are left untouched? Preventive
action is political action. And so we find ourselves participating in
social actions, supporting campaigns against governments and generally getting
involved in politics. This has its own tensions and constraints.
But how else can one serve the poor? Relief work is necessary but what
about preventive work?
Contemplating intently on our actions for the poor, their situation and
the oppressive structures will lead us to another stage. It begins with
the discovery that the poor must save themselves and that they
will do so and will neither need you or me to
do it for them. Spiritually, it is the stage when we come to grips with humility in
our service to the poor.
Oftentimes, if not always, we assume that we must solve the problems of
the poor, either by bringing them relief or by changing the structures that
oppress them. We think that we must come to the rescue of the poor
because they themselves are so pitiably helpless and powerless. There may
even be some idea of getting them to co-operate with us. Or there may be
some idea of teaching them to help themselves (a classical theory of
development). But it is always “we” who are going to teach “them” to help
themselves.
The realization that the poor know better than we do, what needs to be
done and how to do it may come as a surprise. The further
realization that the poor are not only perfectly capable of solving the
structural and political problems that beset them but that they alone can do
it, may shock and shake us. In spiritual terms, this can amount to a real
crisis for us and to a very deep conversion.
Suddenly we are faced with the need to learn from the poor
instead of teaching them. There are certain important insights and a
certain kind of wisdom that we do not have precisely because we are educated
and precisely because we are not poor and have no experience of what it means
to be oppressed. “Blessed are you, Father, for revealing these things not
to the learned and the clever but to the little ones” (Mt. 11:25).
Indeed, it takes a considerable amount of humility to listen and learn from
poor, peasants and slaves, and those considered to be voiceless and in the
margins of the society.
When one is dedicated to the service of the poor, it is even more
difficult to accept that it is not they who need me but I who
need them. They can and will save themselves with or without
me, but I cannot be liberated without them. In theological terms, I have
to discover that it is the poor and oppressed who are God’s chosen instruments
for transforming the world, i.e., the likes of you and me.
God wants to use the poor, in Christ, to save all of us from the madness of a
world in which so many people starve in the midst of unimaginable wealth.
This discovery can become an experience of God’s presence and acting in the
struggles of the poor. Thus we not only see the face of the suffering
Christ in the sufferings of the poor, but we also hear the voice of God and see
His hands and His power in the political struggles of the poor.
The fourth and last stage begins with the crisis of disillusionment and
disappointment with the poor. It begins with the discovery that many poor
and oppressed people do have faults, do commit sins, do make mistakes, do fail
us and let us down or rather fail themselves, and sometimes spoil their own
cause. Like any of us, the poor are also human beings. They are
sometimes selfish, sometimes lacking in commitment and dedication, and worst
sometimes even waste the little money they have. We might even find that
some of the poor have more middle-class aspirations than we have and are less
conscientised or politicized than we are.
The discovery of these things can be an experience of bitter
disillusionment and profound disappointment, a real crisis or some dark night
of the soul. However, it can also be the opportunity for a much deeper
and more realistic solidarity with the poor, a conversion from romanticism to
realism in our service of the poor.
What we need to remember here is that the problem of poverty is a
structural one. The poor are not saints and the rich sinners.
Individuals cannot be praised for being poor or blamed for being rich any more
than they can be blamed for being poor and praised for being rich. There
are exceptions like those who sell their possessions and embrace voluntary
poverty or like those who become rich by exploiting the poor knowingly and intentionally.
They can be praised and blamed respectively. Most of us find ourselves on
one or other side of the great structural divide of oppressor and oppressed,
and this has a profound effect upon the way we think and act. It affects
the type of mistakes we are likely to make as well as the type of insights we
are likely to have.
We can learn from the poor precisely because they are not likely to make
the same mistakes that we are likely to make from our position of education and
material comfort. And yet the oppression and deprivation that they suffer
might lead them to have other misunderstandings and misconceptions. We
are all conditioned by our place in the unjust structures of our society.
We are all alienated by them.
Nevertheless, oppression remains a reality. The two sides are not
equal. The poor are the ones who are sinned against and who are
suffering. Solidarity with them means taking up their
cause, not ours. But we need to do this with them. Together we need
to take sides against oppression and unjust structures. Real solidarity
begins when it is no longer a matter of “we” and “they”. It begins when
we recognize together the advantages and disadvantages of our different social
backgrounds and present realities and the quite different roles that we shall
therefore have to play while we commit ourselves together to
the struggle against oppression.
This kind of solidarity, however, must be at the service of a much more
fundamental solidarity: the solidarity between the poor themselves. Those
who are not poor and oppressed but wish to serve the poor in solidarity with
them often do so in a manner that divides the poor themselves and sets them one
against another. We need to find a way of being part of the solidarity
that the poor and oppressed are building with one another. After all we
do all have a common enemy - the system and its injustice.
In the end we will find one another in God - whatever our particular
approach to God might be. The system is our common enemy because it is
first of all the enemy of God. As Christians we will experience this
solidarity with one another as a solidarity in Christ, a solidarity with the
cause of the poor. It is precisely by recognizing the cause of the poor
as God’s cause that we can come through the crisis of disillusionment and
disappointment with particular poor people.
This is a very high ideal and it would be an illusion to imagine that we
could reach it without a long personal struggle that will take us through
several stages, through crises, dark nights, shocks and challenges. What
matters is that we recognize that we are part of a process. We will always have
further to go. We must always remain open to further developments.
There are no short cuts. Moreover, we are not the only ones going through
this process. Some will be ahead of us and we may grapple to understand
them. Others will be only beginning on the road to maturity in the
matter. We need to appreciate their process, their need to struggle
further and grow spiritually. There is no room here for accusations and recriminations.
What we all need is encouragement, support and mutual understanding
of the way the Spirit is working in us and through us.
Justice and Charity
In the nineteenth century, with the rise of modern industry in the world
and the spread of Marxism, charitable works of the Church were seen and
criticized as exit-doors and camouflage used especially by the rich in order to
escape and evade the duty and responsibility to build a just society.
In keeping their status quo, they are in a way robbing the poor with their
rights. The Church admits that these observations contain some grain of
truth but not totally. It recognizes the need to build a just social
order, wherein everyone receives their share of the world’s goods and no longer
have to depend on charity. Moreover, the Church also humbly admits that
its leadership is slow to realize that the issue of the just structuring of
society needed to be approached in a new way. Nevertheless, the Church is
blessed with a rich collection of social doctrines which are fundamental
guidelines offering approaches that are valid even beyond the confines of the
Church. However, these materials should be interpreted in the present
context and to be addressed in the context of dialogue with all those seriously
concerned for humanity and for the world in which we live.
Secondly, even in the most just society, charity is necessary.
There is no ordering of the state so just that it can eliminate the need for a
service of love, inasmuch as there will always be suffering which cries out for
consolation and help. There will always be loneliness. There will
always be situations of material need where help in the form of concrete love
of neighbor is indispensable. Indeed, those who want to eliminate love
are preparing to eliminate man as such.
Since the just ordering and civil order is not the Church’s immediate
responsibility, thus the citizens of the state, i.e., the lay faithful, are
called in their own personal capacity to give a hand. The direct duty to
work for a just ordering of society is proper to them, the lay faithful.
The mission of the lay faithful is therefore to configure social life
correctly, respecting its legitimate autonomy and cooperating with other
citizens according to their respective competencies and fulfilling their own
responsibility. Even if the specific expressions of ecclesial charity can
never be confused with the activity of the State, it still remains true that
charity must animate the entire lives of the lay faithful and therefore also
their political activity, lived as “social charity”. Nevertheless, the
Church can never be exempted from practicing charity as an organized activity
of believers inasmuch as there will never be a situation where the charity of
each individual Christian is unnecessary, because in addition to justice man
needs, and will always need, love.
A Spark of Hope
The Church of the Poor, not a church literally filled with the poor,
like what happened when typhoon ‘Ondoy’ hit the Metropolis, is one whose
members and leaders have a special love for the poor. This special love
is a love of preference for the poor. However, it must be emphasized that
this love is never exclusive and excluding in such a way that there is no room
in the heart of every church member, the Christians, for those who are not
poor. Christians are expected to love all persons whether they are just
or unjust, or even if they are our enemies.
Certainly, we are members of the Church of the Poor and hence, are
expected to have a special love for the poor. In other words, we as
members of the Church of the Poor are the hope of the poor around us. But the
question is, “Why is it that there are still so many poor people around
us?” What have we done? Are we even doing something for these poor
people? Do we give them a voice to speak their concerns and pains?
Do we give them a chance and opportunities to uplift their situation and be
liberated from their condition? Do they still have hope?
Yes, I do believe that they still have much hope to be relieved from
their sad condition, and a spark of that hope rests on our very own
hands. Now, in our own capacity, how can we really and concretely help
the poor?
by Noel Kristoffer R. Castor, OP
*An adaptation and reflection based on the
opus "The Four Stages of Spiritual Growth in Helping the Poor" by Albert Nolan,
and the encyclical letter Deus Caristas Est of Pope Benedict XVI.
***Photos by Br. Carlo Rey C. Canto, OP
