The poor you will always have with you.

Remember that rebuke?

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I don't know what is wrong with me - but I get really angry over stories such as the 9 year old Brazilian girl, pregnant with twins; or the story of a Miami abortionist throwing away an infant who survived the botched procedure - into a plastic bag with the bloodied newspaper. I just don't get it. And now days, people are getting poorer - friends are telling stories of the poor stealing food, going without necessities and health coverage, evicted from homes, and so on.

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Yet Jesus seemed to shrug off monetary concerns for the poor when he reprimanded Judas, who happened to be so inordinately focused upon money, he used the poor as an excuse to object to Mary using expensive ointment to dress the Lord's feet. (Reminds me of how critics of the Church insist that money shouldn't be spent upon vestments and sacred vessels, but rather given to the poor.)

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My pious, naive thoughts on the poor.

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But what did Our Lord mean? There had to be more to it than that. As I understand it, it appears a sense of justice will always prevail, and we may rightly expect that the poor will always be helped through monetary and material provisions, in some way or another. So if the 9 year old Brazilian girl and her family could have been well cared for; given money, food, clothing, even decent housing, these things most likely would not have prevented the sexual exploitation or the pregnancy. In the United States, we know by experience that materialism does not prevent the moral decay which leads to the sexual abuse, spousal and child abuse, as well as drug abuse, criminal behaviour and violence that infects the ghettos, housing projects and lower income suburbs of the world.

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Yes, the poor need monetary aid and the necessities of life. Yet for some reason, the (economic) inequity typical of Latino Catholic cultures, along with African and Indian cultures (in their respective countries), never seems to go away - or get any better. I wonder if what the poor are deprived of most of all - more seriously than anything else - is authentic religion. Not simply catechesis, but decent liturgical life, education, moral example - and most of all, the presence of the Church. Missionaries once civilized entire societies in the Americas, devotion flourished despite racial and monetary disparity, while the missions became the center of culture.

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The poor we will aways have in our midst.

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We need to pray for the missions, the missionaries, as well as for an increase in good missionary vocations. The missionary cannot simply be an aid worker, he is called to bring the faith to the poor; the missionary is sent to bring Christ into the midst of the poor. Though present in the Eucharist, many of the poor no longer have Him in their midst. We need to once again recognize Christ amongst us in the Blessed Sacrament, and share him with the poor. Yes, the poor we will always have with us, but Jesus wants to be in their midst.

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I kind of think that is one of the things the Lord was trying to explain to Judas.

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Many of us can forget about the missions - save for on Mission Sunday. Can't be a missionary in a foreign land? We can be one at home, and we can pray and sacrifice and donate. Matt Talbot gave most of his paycheck to the missions. His best tool for evangelization was/is his example.