African woman assisted by Catholic Relief Services

I’ve been to concerts and sporting events with 25,000 people sitting in the stands. I didn’t know that’s how many human beings die of the effects of poverty each day around the globe.

They die of hunger mostly, but also of preventable diseases such as malaria, diarrhea and tuberculosis. They die in Africa, South America, Asia. They are newborns and they are parents and grandparents. They die in Haiti, a short plane ride away from my Florida home and in time zones far from us. They die simply because they are poor in a world that is rich.

An Indian woman in Guatemala told me she ate very little because whatever she earned she used for her little daughter’s nourishment. I saw children begging tourists to buy cheap trinkets they were selling past 11 p.m. on the street. I saw poor people doing without so that we American guests could have the best part of the meal we were sharing.

Poverty of spirit kills Western cultures and poverty of the body kills the rest of the world. Meister Eckhart says, “The poor in spirit go out of themselves and all creatures: they are nothing, they have nothing, they do nothing, and these poor are not saved that by grace they are God with God: which they are not aware of.” 

We live in a society where even the poorest of Americans are rich in comparison to much of the world. Five million Mexicans are malnourished and we wonder why there’s illegal immigration. Almost 218 million Indians are malnourished and we ask why Mother Teresa spent her life there. Every twelfth person in our world is malnourished.

In the poem Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, Thomas Gray refers to “the short and simple annals of the poor.” The poor don’t merit obituaries or memorials: they die as silently and as ignored as they lived. The poor, it seems, will always be with us.

Mother Teresa of Calcutta took a more pragmatic approach to poverty: “If there are poor in the world, it is because you and I don’t give enough.”  We can’t chalk hunger up to having the poor with us if we don’t reach out to help someone in need. The short and simple annals of the poor don’t have to remain a secret.

Catholic Relief Services does a wonderful job easing the poverty of our brothers and sisters in other nations. Rather than giving up chocolate for Lent, make a pledge to support their holy work.  Tonight, 25,000 souls will be rising to God after dying of hunger and God will someday ask us what we did today to help one of those thousands. We won’t have to ask, “Lord, when did we see you hungry?” because we will know He is in those with whom we share this world.

There are different types of poverty in our society. Let us strive not to be poor in spirit even if we’re poor in material things.

Fr. Fenlon recounted how he had visited Rwanda with fellow CRS priests and how the journey had transformed him. Rwanda, he told us, is the most Catholic nation in Africa and the most densely populated with 10 million souls sharing a nation the size of Maryland. Racial violence pits two tribes, the Hutus and Tutsis, against each other, even though all are Christians.

With horror, he told us about a Roman Catholic priest who invited members of an opposing tribe to enter his church and then ordered bulldozers to decimate everyone inside. Fr. Fenlon visited a memorial to ritual slaughter that left thousands of corpses of every gender and age as reminders of how the people of God harden their hearts. He took the phrase from today’s readings in Psalm 95: “Oh, that today you would hear his voice: ‘Harden not your hearts.’”

Fr. Fenlon urged our comfortable suburban church to support CRS as it continues assisting Catholics in other lands. Fair-trade coffee that puts more earnings in the hands of the poor who actually pick the coffee berries builds the body of Christ.

During a mission visit to Guatemala in 1999, I heard poor farmers talking about the low wages received from multinational corporations such as Dole and coffee barons for the fruits of their labors. We’ll be buying fair-trade coffee again.

By coincidence, CRS is featuring a campaign to end malnutrition in Guatemala as its lead story on its Web site. I worked in a tiny village an hour from the nearest town and I saw scrawny two-year-olds who couldn’t walk because they were too malnourished to stand up. I heard women tell me how many babies they lost in their lifetimes to treatable diseases. I spoke with men ashamed because they couldn’t make enough to feed their families. The meanness of poverty was everywhere, but I met so many beautiful people whose love of God was deep and genuine. They were rich in their love of God.

The shame of Rwanda’s slaughter has always been the role of religious more motivated by tribal loyalties than by the message of the Gospel they took a vow to live by. May God forgive their sins and may He keep their victims close to His heart.