The Emergency Room door slid open, a large scruffy-looking man shuffles in with the cool night air. His soiled shirt half off, exposing his entire right side. “Help me!” he says with a slight drunken slur, slowly dragging his feet across the floor towards the reception desk. “Help me!” He continues moaning like some ghostly figure out of a Dickens novel. His audience unimpressed. We are about fifty people who have been waiting patiently for hours for some help ourselves.


“Please be seated. I’ll be with you in a moment.” The duty nurse calmly replies. “Help me! I’m going to fall.”  The retorts. “I’m falling now!”  He utters shamelessly as he slowly descends to spread himself across the floor in front of the plexiglass window that separates them. “Help me!” “I’m on the floor now. PLEASE!! Someone, help me.”  He pleads, feigning an urgent demise.


Having witnessed similar requests like this during my time as a welfare worker downtown, my first reaction was to roll my eyes and think of the help he really needs. At two o’clock in the morning, I had been sitting quietly for over ten hours for someone to hear my complaints. Sympathy was not my first reaction. After this rather callous response came a spark of conscience beckoning me to at least go and offer some consolation. To at least let him know that someone in this crowded room was listening to his cries.  Then, from experience of having done just that many times before,  I was reminded of how quickly whatever I said or did would be completely forgotten.  


Being poor in any sense of the word means that you lack something that is needed. Sometimes this designation can lead, by chance or neglect, to a relentless lament of what you don’t have, what was taken from you, whose to blame. You then begin a vain and sometimes vengeful quest to reclaim what was lost. Embracing your poverty is the last thing that comes to mind.


After I somewhat selfishly decided that any response of mine would be a waste of time, I felt relieved as two burly security guards appeared wearing protective vests and latex gloves to gently convince him to get up off the floor and to lead him away to what was likely not a visit with a doctor but probably somewhere to sleep it off.

  

In his first official publication last week, Pope Leo gives us his Apostolic Exhortation, Dilexi te (I have loved you). In it, we are reminded that the love of God is inseparable from love of the poor. He defines the poor as those who have no influence or resources, those who are treated with violence and contempt for the circumstances they find themselves in. They are the homeless and hopeless of this world that Jesus promises to honour and protect.


Pope Leo gives us the example of when Jesus was anointed with costly oil, where some complained that the money would have been better spent on the poor. Most people usually see Jesus’ response to let the woman continue as license to enjoy the fruits of our labour. To indulge ourselves a little at the expense of the poor.  Pope Leo explains this passage as an acknowledgment of Christ’s unity with the poor, with the suffering, the outcast, of whom he is one. Those whom this world rejects in the most profound and dismissive of ways are those that Jesus chooses to bless by becoming one with them.


The anointing becomes then an act of selfless giving that acknowledges Christ’s poverty, not a self-indulgent act of glorifying him above all. Love for the Lord, Leo says, is one with love for the poor. Love for the poor is an acceptance of our love of Jesus.


In our world of constant distraction, where jaded love is seen as the greatest good, we often find ourselves wondering what true love is -even if it exists at all. So conditioned are we with boasts of self-autonomy and self-pleasure that even doing something for someone is seen only as serving ourselves. The concepts of selfless giving, self-sacrifice, and even suffering itself have become mocked and shunned into the realms of mental illness. Suffering has become something to avoid at all costs, even to the point of death. Avoiding suffering, even among Christians, has become more acceptable than embracing it as Christ did. Jesus calls us to take the path of greatest resistance, so we can challenge ourselves to draw closer to the love of God and each other.


This is where the church becomes poor and for the poor in its mission. A mission that has its roots in a shared poverty that unifies everyone in the glory of God. Caring for the poor, Pope Leo says, is our essential task as Catholics.

He concludes, “Christian love breaks down every barrier, brings close those who were distant, unites strangers, and reconciles enemies. It spans chasms that are humanly impossible to bridge, and it penetrates to the most hidden crevices of society. By its very nature, Christian love is prophetic: it works miracles and knows no limits. It makes what was apparently impossible happen. Love is above all a way of looking at life and a way of living it. A Church that sets no limits to love, that knows no enemies to fight but only men and women to love, is the Church that the world needs today.”


This weekend, we are having a Ministry Fair at our parish to showcase the many ways in which we, the poor, help the poor among us. The spiritually homeless who come seeking a place to worship, the hungry seeking food to eat, and the poor of spirit seeking someone to listen. This is the work of the poor for the poor. Please consider a humble and generous contribution.


Blessed are the poor, for among them our Saviour is found,



Fr. John