Wednesday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time
When we think of poverty, our minds typically go to material poverty. We think of the poor as people lacking financial, material, or physical resources needed for daily living. During my time working for Heart to Honduras, I came to understand poverty and poverty alleviation much more broadly. I also came to recognize my own impoverishment in a deeper way. Today’s readings call to mind our poverty, remind us of God’s faithfulness, and perhaps can inspire us to be people through whom God can respond to the cry of the poor.
Asset-based Community Development operates from the understanding that poverty exists in four basic forms: poverty toward God, poverty toward self, poverty in relationships, and poverty toward the creation. When people don’t know God and aren’t in relationship with God, that is a form of impoverishment. If I lack healthy self-esteem and deny or fail to acknowledge my inherent worth and dignity as a child of God, I’m impoverished within myself. Any form of brokenness in relationships becomes an impoverishment. When we fail to be good stewards and caretakers of God’s creation, we experience poverty throughout our earth. Our psalm assures us that God hears the cry of the poor from whatever state or depth of poverty in which we find ourselves.
In today’s first reading, Abraham’s household experiences a great deal of brokenness. Abraham had failed to trust God’s promise to provide offspring and took it upon himself to have a child with his slave Hagar. That decision led to great conflict and angst between Hagar and Sarah and between Abraham and Sarah. Hagar and Ishmael suffered greatly until God intervened in their lives. In the Gospel, the poor men possessed by demons lived terrorized lives until Jesus delivered them and set them free. Imagine the poverty these men experienced, spiritually, mentally, physically, emotionally, socially during their oppression by the forces of darkness.
How about you, how about me? In what forms of poverty do we find ourselves today? Certainly, none of our relationships are perfect, and many, if not all of us experience great hurt and brokenness in one or more of our key relationships. Spiritually, are we close to God, and walking with the Lord? How is our socio-emotional state? Do we have a healthy regard for and care of the world around us? Those are just a few prompts for consideration, introspection, and reflection.
The Lord hears the cry of the poor. What comforting, hopeful, and encouraging truth! The Lord hears the cry of the poor. God hears your cries, my cries, and the cries of every human on the planet. Just as God heard Hagar and Ishmael’s cries and responded mercifully, just as Jesus heard and saw the state of the poor demoniacs and responded mercifully, God hears our cries and responds to us with love, mercy, and grace. Take hope and courage today knowing that God hears, sees, and responds to your personal cries.
God works through the Body of Christ to respond to the cries of the poor. As members of the Body, recipients of God’s mercy, we must be responsive channels of God’s mercy to others. Today might be a day when God responds to a particular cry of the poor through you or through me! When St Paul met with the Apostles, and they agreed that Paul’s mission was to the Gentiles, they blessed him and sent him on his way. Reflecting on their agreement, Paul stated, “All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I had been eager to do all along” (Gal. 2:10). Let us be eager, like Paul was, to respond to the cries of the poor as the Spirit leads us.
Today, I pray that we might see, really see, through the eyes of Christ. May we see ourselves as Christ sees us, recognize our poverty, and ask for the graces we need to overcome and alleviate that impoverishment. May we see others through Christ’s eyes, recognizing their poverty and being eager and quick to be merciful, kind, and generous. Come, Lord Jesus! Thank you, Lord! Amen!
Elizabeth Wourms