3rd Sunday of Lent, C March 11, 2007
The Lord said, “I have witnessed the affliction of my people in Egypt and have heard their cry of complaint against their slave drivers, so I know well what they are suffering.” It’s very helpful to have such a firsthand experience of suffering people. What did it do for God? It moved God to ease people’s suffering.” The lesson for us? If we are to respond to the suffering of others, we have, first, to be aware of their suffering. We may find this a challenge, for the poor and suffering are often hidden from our sight. And because of their invisibility it is also easy to get the wrong impression about them.
Today’s scriptures once again call us to repent. Repent of what? Maybe our wrong impression of the poor. Maybe our blindness of those who suffer. It is easy to ignore those we don’t see. It’s easy to dismiss the poor as unworthy of our help if we harbor attitudes that miss the mark. We all have to resist attitudes about the poor and suffering that cripple our desire to help them.
I came across an article on this I saved in the Jesuit journal, America. It was by Michael Novak, who espouses enlightened capitalism. In his article he argued that the real hope for Central and Latin America lay in private enterprise creating more jobs, and moving the poor up the ladder to full employment. This provoked a sharp response from another writer who said, “The sophisticated tend to view the poor from a distance, from the capitalist’s armchair. For example, Mr. Novak thinks that every year more of the young poor of Latin America ‘will be turning 16 and seeking work.’ He fails to realize that those who survive to this age have already been working (that is, laboring) for most of their lives. Many of them have already seen several years of military service. They have been surrounded for 16 years by squalid living conditions, by sickness, by violence, and by death. He continues by asking, “What does it mean under such conditions to ‘seek work’? Do we imagine that these kids turn to the classifieds and submit their resumes at the local job fair?”
Another story I kept was from a Maryknoll priest in Peru, who wrote of hearing the confession of a young boy. The lad recounted the usual childhood items, then paused and said, “And I did not go out and look for work.” The priest asked how old the boy was. He said 11 and that he lived with his mother and three younger brothers and sisters in a shack on the outskirts of Lima. The priest continued, “I realized he was telling me he knew he had the responsibility for providing his share of bread for his poor family. I was reminded of Christ carrying the weight of our sins on the cross. This lad was carrying the weight of the sins of the world.”
Do we harbor illusions about the poor that are part of the heavy sins of the world?
Or, are we comfortable that the poor are largely hidden from our view? There are poor people in our own country, in the hollows of Appalachia, down the back roads of the rural South, on the reservations for native Americans, even here in Ithaca, in the hidden tent city of the homeless down behind Wegman’s. Indeed, it took a disastrous flood in New Orleans to shine the light of day on that city’s hidden poverty.
Let’s ask ourselves, does out of sight mean out of mind, and, so, beyond our concern? Once the poor take on a face and a story like that of the boy in Peru and the poor in New Orleans, we can be quite compassionate and responsive to them. How will we know the faces and stories of the poor and the suffering? We have to search them out.
Can you make a Lenten resolution, to try once a week to consciously be aware of a poor person? How about the young mother with a toddler ahead of you at the supermarket checkout who is fumbling with food stamps? Or, you might resolve to read something new about those suffering homelessness or unemployment, or hunger, or war. What do you spend your time reading?
Lent is a sacred season to change for the better our attitudes and our actions. May God remove any blindness or ignorance preventing us from treating everyone as a brother or sister.