“For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me” (Matthew 25:35-36).
My last reflection on the seven themes of Catholic Social Teaching examined the third: rights and responsibilities. In it, I clarified that the “duty of love” is described by St. Augustine as rooted in the twofold command of love of God and love of neighbor. In exploring the question of “who is my neighbor,” we discovered Simone Weil’s extended treatment of Jesus’ response to this question in Luke 10:25-37 and her conclusion that the command to love our neighbor is a call to universal love that demands presence to all.
This presence is one that refuses to treat our neighbors as abstract things and embraces the discomfort of encountering another. Here, it is fitting to begin our discussion of the Church’s teaching on the preferential option for the poor and vulnerable.
The Genuine Poor Man
Our instructions to care for the poor and vulnerable have their roots in the Old Testament, with passages such as these:
“You shall not oppress the poor or vulnerable. God will hear their cry” (Exodus 22:20-26).
“Speak out in defense of the poor” (Proverbs 31:8-9).
“True worship is to work for justice and care for the poor and oppressed” (Isaiah 25:5-7).
These verses demonstrate that care for the poor and vulnerable is not primarily motivated by a desire for a more equitable society. Rather, the people of God care for the poor and vulnerable because God does. Thus, caring for the poor and vulnerable is an imitation of divine love, and living in such a way transforms society.
Even more poignantly, Scripture challenges us in Isaiah’s suffering servant to recognize the divine presence (Isaiah 53:2-7):
He had no stately form or majesty to attract us, no beauty that we should desire Him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief … He was despised, and we esteemed Him not … He was oppressed and afflicted, yet He did not open His mouth.
From first to last, the life of the Incarnate Son concretizes the divine option for the poor and vulnerable revealed by the suffering servant in Isaiah. Born in the marginalized town of Bethlehem, the King of Kings was “wrapped in swaddling clothes” and laid in a manger. The Son of God has everything, including divinity, yet he divested Himself and emptied Himself, “taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness, and found human in appearance” (Philippians 2:7).
In the Paschal Mystery of the Incarnate Son, God lives according to His modus operandi of seeking people on the spiritual and material margins of society. To reconcile all things to Himself, Jesus, our Savior and King, chose to be poor and vulnerable so that people at the furthest limits of forsakenness might be drawn back into full communion with God.
In Sermon 14, St. Augustine tells us:
We have found the genuine Poor Man, we have found Him to be kind and humble, not trusting in Himself, truly poor, a member of the poor man who became poor for our sake, though He was rich … He is conceived in a woman’s virginal womb, He is enclosed in His mother’s belly. What poverty! He is born in a mean lodging, wrapped in baby clothes and laid in a manger; He becomes fodder for poor beasts. And the Lord of heaven and earth, Creator of angels, Maker and Founder of all things visible and invisible, sucks, cries, is reared, grows, puts up with being his age, conceals his ageless majesty, later on is arrested, scorned, scourged, mocked, spat at, slapped, crowned with thorns, hung on a tree, pierced with a lance. What poverty!
Lord, When Did We See You Hungry?
What was said of God in the Old Testament, therefore, applies to Christ and to the Christian life of discipleship. We care for the poor because that is how Jesus lived, and the life of the Incarnate Son tells us to go one step further: We care for the poor because Jesus identifies so intimately with the poor and called us to recognize Him in marginalized people—that is, “the least of these.”
The poverty and vulnerability of Christ is clearest in the Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist. In the Eucharist, the Creator of all things humbles Himself to become our food and drink. Consequently, receiving the Eucharist commits us to the poor. Quoting St. John Chrysostom, the Catechism puts it this way:
To receive in truth the Body and Blood of Christ given up for us, we must recognize Christ in the poorest, His brethren: “You have tasted the Blood of the Lord, yet you do not recognize your brother…You dishonor this table when you do not judge worthy of sharing your food someone judged worthy to take part in this meal…God freed you from all your sins and invited you here, but you have not become more merciful” [Catechism 1397, Matthew 25:40].
In our encounter with Jesus in the Eucharist, we remember His Passion, which was His sacrifice for our salvation, and His Resurrection, which was His promise of eternal happiness with Him. When we feed the poor and care for the vulnerable, our actions express a Eucharistic remembering: “Take and eat, for the Lord your God has loved you into being and it is His very Life that sustains your life even now.”
By living this way, our actions take on a deeper level of meaning. We are not simply doing charitable work; we let our light shine before others, so that they may give glory to our Heavenly Father (Matthew 5:16).
The Least of These: Humble Accompaniment
In our society, there is more than just a tendency to encourage self-promotion—to be interesting to others rather than to be genuinely interested in others. This is true particularly in business, where we are coached to build up our resumes and CVs creatively, with almost dishonest descriptions of our duties and job titles. We are taught the two-minute elevator pitch and how to network effectively so as to instrumentalize our new acquaintances to “get ahead” in life.
As we seek to imitate Christ, to live out our true identity as Christians and be His real presence in the world by serving the least of these, we must guard against the temptation to help others for the sake of ourselves. We might say to ourselves interiorly or aloud, “Wow, I’m a really good person—I’m feeding the hungry” or, “This is awesome; I have five garbage bags of clothes to donate. I am so generous!” If someone compliments us, we might respond, “Thanks, Marcia, it’s nice to be recognized once in a while.”
Saying the quiet part aloud is not the issue. The issue is allowing our egos to be stroked and not trying to cooperate with grace to cultivate the virtue of humility. What saint has ever given themselves credit for their goodness?
To model Christ, then, we must follow His model of accompaniment. Accompaniment is not an asymmetrical encounter, adopting an internal posture of “I am here to help you.” Accompaniment is mutual vulnerability. Christ identified with us, “not seeking equality with God something to be grasped” (Philippians 2:6).
The Eucharistic elements encourage us to imitate this humility. In the bread that becomes Christ’s body, we see the food of the poor now given to us. In receiving the food of the poor transubstantiated into the Poor Man, we, too, are to become poor as He is poor. We are called to recognize our own poverty, our radical dependence upon God’s love as Creator to take our next breath, and our radical dependence on Christ as Savior to overcome our spiritual poverty.
From there, we are called to identify ourselves with the poor and vulnerable as Christ identified with them. It is not enough to view them as our brothers and sisters. They are us. We are bonded together as members of Jesus’ Body—as men and women created in the image and likeness of God, loved into being and sustained by His Love.
All of us.
Thus, the Son of God Incarnate compels a mutual vulnerability that not only asks us to give of ourselves but also demands that we receive others, which is perhaps the more challenging thing to do. In his book “Reclaiming Catholic Social Teaching,” Anthony Esolen puts it this way: “Even the poor need to give of themselves, and deserve to have their gifts received and honored.”
So, as we reflect upon this fourth principle of Catholic Social Teaching, let’s also prayerfully reflect on ways to cultivate hearts of loving receptivity so that we might live up to our identity as Christians. For the world will know who we are and Who He Is by our love.
Vanessa Crescio is an accountant with Lipic’s Engagement. She earned an MBA from the University of Notre Dame, an MTS from Newman University, and worked in the real estate and banking industries prior to serving in business roles at the parish and archdiocesan levels. She is interested in thinking through co-responsibility in the Church and developing leadership programs to form Catholics to serve the Church with not only their knowledge, skills, and abilities but with the servant heart of Christ. Read more of her writing at FRESHImage, and follow her on Instagram.