The Blessing

I am rereading Ronald Rolheiser’s book: Wrestling with God. This morning, I came upon one passage that I had underlined when I first read it:

“We need to give to the poor not because they need it, though they do, but because we need to do that in order to be healthy. That’s an axiom that is grounded in the scriptures where, time and again, we are taught that giving to the poor is something that we need to do for our own health.”

The axiom Rolheiser states is valid for individuals, but also for communities as well. If we want vital and flourishing parishes, we need to put less focus on how the needs of the parishioners can be satisfied than on how they can be invited, equipped and empowered to serve the poorest and weakest in their milieu, those who are most often isolated, outsiders or even outcasts.

Charity may begin at home, as the well-worn idiom would have it, but it cannot remain encamped within its walls. The grace we receive within the community must flow outward. Water that does not flow eventually becomes stagnant.

In Matthew 25 Jesus, the King, says, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father…” This is usually interpreted to mean that if we welcome the stranger, take care of the sick, visit the prisoner, feed the poor, clothe the naked… we are blessed – the blessing is the outcome of our actions. But we are blessed primarily because we are given the opportunity to grow in love by serving others. The poor need us, but we need them even more. They are the channel through which the blessing is given to us. One could even say that the poor are the blessing because they teach us to love (and stretch our hearts until we can really do so) as Jesus did.