Pope Leo in a homily last month: :
“And I encourage you not to distinguish between those who assist and those who are assisted, between those who seem to give and those who seem to receive, between those who present themselves as poor and those who feel the need to offer time, skills, and help. We are the Church of the Lord, a Church of the poor, all precious, all participants, each bearer of a unique Word of God. Each one is a gift to others. Let us tear down the walls.
I thank those who work in every Christian community to facilitate encounters between people who are diverse by origin, by their economic, psychological, and emotional situation. Only together, only as a single Body in which even the most fragile participate with full dignity, will we be the Body of Christ, the Church of God. This happens when the fire that Jesus came to bring burns away the prejudices, cautions, and fears that continue to marginalize those who bear the poverty of Christ in their own history.
Let us not leave the Lord out of our churches, our homes, and our lives. Rather, let us allow him to enter into the poor, and then we will also make peace with our poverty, which we fear and deny when we seek tranquility and security at all costs.”
I found these words powerful and important because they address, among other matters, something that has long bothered me about middle-class American Catholicism – language reflecting the reality of the economic class structure of American communities and neighborhoods – and therefore, American Catholic parishes.
Language in which “we” – the upper-middle class Catholics of the Vibrant Community of St. Blaise – are reminded of our invitation to serve “the poor” – who, since they don’t live in “our” neighborhood, are “them” somehow outside “our” Church.
When in fact, we are all the Body of Christ, we are all – as Pope Leo, and incidentally Mother Teresa often pointed out – The Poor.
