Sketch by Fritz Eichenberg
"...looked at with the eyes of a visitor, our place must look dingy indeed, filled as it always is with men and women, some children too, all of whom bear the unmistakable mark of misery and destitution. Aren't we deceiving ourselves, I am sure many of them think, in the work we are doing? What are we accomplishing for them anyway, or for the world or for the common good? 'Are these people being rehabilitated?' is the question we get almost daily...The mystery of the poor is this: That they are Jesus, and what you do for them you do for Him. It is the only way we have of knowing and believing in our love. The mystery of poverty is that by sharing in it, making ourselves poor in giving to others, we increase our knowledge of and belief in love." Dorothy Day
The God We Hardly Knew
Archbishop Oscar Romero
No one can celebrate
a genuine Christmas
without being truly poor.
The self-sufficient, the proud,
those who, because they have
everything, look down on others,
those who have no need
even of God- for them there
will be no Christmas.
Only the poor, the hungry,
those who need someone
to come on their behalf,
will have that someone.
That someone is God.
Emmanuel. God-with-us.
Without poverty of spirit
there can be no abundance of God.
a genuine Christmas
without being truly poor.
The self-sufficient, the proud,
those who, because they have
everything, look down on others,
those who have no need
even of God- for them there
will be no Christmas.
Only the poor, the hungry,
those who need someone
to come on their behalf,
will have that someone.
That someone is God.
Emmanuel. God-with-us.
Without poverty of spirit
there can be no abundance of God.
Archbishop Romero was shot on March 24, 1980, while celebrating Mass at a small chapel located in a hospital called "La Divina Providencia", one day after a sermon where he had called on Salvadoran soldiers, as Christians, to obey God's higher order and to stop carrying out the government's repression and violations of basic human rights. According to an audio-recording of the Mass, he was shot while elevating the chalice at the end of the Eucharistic rite. When he was shot, his blood spilled over the altar along with the contents of the chalice.
3 comments:
That is some powerful stuff, Beth. I needed this post, this perspective, especially now when the temptation to lose myself in the peripheral parts of Christmas is so strong. Thank you.
By these standards, we should have the best Christmas EVER!!
More seriously, I was listening to a speech by Fr. Moses Berry at St. Tikhon's and he spoke of how if he had been harassed during his travels, he would have complained and gone to the authorities because ultimately he has hope in this world. He then suggested that in some ways we should be jealous of the early Christian martyrs, and the American slaves, because it was easier for them to rest their hope fully in the kingdom of God as they had no hope in this world.
No one can celebrate a genuine Christmas without being truly poor. "Blessed be ye poor; for yours is the kingdom of God."
Thanks for posting this, Beth.
I have friends who feel no need of God, and I find it difficult to understand. How? How can you work to be without Him?
We began this season feeling very rich, physically at least, but we end it feeling poor. I am ready for the day to come.
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