Blessed Are the Poor in Spirit

The Revd Deacon Polly Bowen

Ragged souls are led to chairs of gold;

cracked callused fingers hold silver chalices

when the Holy One holds a banquet.

            This is just one of the compact, pithy meditations that has haunted me throughout the past month or two.  I read it in a book by Ann Fontaine, a priest from the Diocese of Wyoming.  There is so much meditative “meat” in those three short lines that I have spent hours in prayer and contemplation with them.

            When I was a student at Christ the King Seminary I learned about God’s “Preferential Option for the Poor.”  It is extolled by prophets, expanded by popes, explained by professors, expounded by preachers and lived by almost nobody.  The Bible is rife with examples: Leviticus and Deuteronomy command us to leave our fallen grapes and the edges of our harvest fields for the poor, and to care for widows and orphans.  The great 7th century prophets Amos and Hosea, Isaiah and Jeremiah castigate Israel for ignoring these commands and treating the poor with scorn.  And there are countless examples from the teachings of Jesus, beginning with his very first sermon.

            Down through the centuries Christians have sometimes honored the poor who chose to be poor (various orders of monks and nuns) but forgot to honor those who were poverty-stricken through circumstances beyond their control.  Only in the past 100 years or so have there been serious attempts to help the poor or eradicate poverty.  Frequently these attempts are sporadic and incomplete, and treating the poor with dignity is often forgotten.

            But God remembers.  And in Biblical jargon, God’s “remembering” is synonymous with God’s action.  The verse above speaks eloquently of God’s tender care for those he loves.  The banquet metaphor – which evokes Eucharistic thought where all are equal – invites us to put into action the preferential option for the poor.

            We have many examples: St. Francis, Dorothy Day, Walter Rauschenbusch, Mother Teresa, the Liberation Theology movement and more.  But these giants of the faith, while they may be the stuff of dream and imagination, are a little daunting to the average Christian.  We need a more immediate example.

            Here at St. Matthias Church we have one.   We have Mary Meyer.  Mary is a woman who many years ago became aware of a call from God telling her to relinquish her own comfortable circumstances on behalf of those whose needs were greater than hers.  She did this,  using her own resources and urging the rest of us to a new consciousness of the needs of the less fortunate.

            I am proud of our St. Matthias congregation for the way we respond to the various needs that are presented – the Interfaith Hospitality Network, the soup kitchen, the Christmas gift tree and other special efforts, and especially the ongoing day-after day, week-after-week needs of the people we serve.  But most of all, I am in awe of Mary Meyer, who tirelessly reminds us of our responsibility and organizes our efforts.  Surely she is a prophet among us.

            But Mary knows, as I know, that all of our practical, tangible works of mercy are dust without a solid relationship with the Lord.  Mother Ann’s meditation verse speaks to this need as well: the ragged souls are ours, continually invited to the banquet.  Drinking from the silver chalice, we lift our eyes to the hands of those who offer it, or lift them even higher to behold the face of the beloved brother or sister who attends the banquet with us.  We come in poverty of spirit, garbed in our ragged cloaks of piety, and grasp the silver chalice with our bruised and bleeding fingers . . .

            And the Holy One remembers, and welcomes us . . .