If you look carefully at today’s Gospel, there is a phrase there that should lead us to do a double take. Jesus explains that the signs that he is the messiah are that the lame walk, the dead are raised, the blind see, the deaf hear. But notice something else. Besides all those miraculous signs, which clearly are proof that he is someone special, is another. As the original Greek says: the poor are evangelized. Not the people are evangelized, the poor are evangelized. Why is that so key?
First, let us ask the question who are the poor? They are the powerless people in society. They are not necessarily without money although often they are but they are without power and influence. They are subject to all the powers of society and must live as society says for they have little recourse.
Understand something very important. There is no sin in being rich. If rich people were by default sinners then there would be no such saint as Thomas More among others.
The rich have more advantages than the poor. The poor are subject to everything the rich want them to be.
So when you preach to the poor you are connecting them to the ultimate power and the ultimate hope. The rich may not have that connection because they may not have the need to connect to the gospel as the poor. Notice I used the subjunctive there. I said may not have the need, not do not have the need.
However, they have the resources the poor do not have.
The other day, I saw a video of a robbery of a phone store. Teens just walked in and took a bunch of phones and walked out with them. As I watched it, I thought to myself, this is what happens when you have no one preaching the Gospel to the poor. The teens may not realize it, they are proclaiming they are taking power. However, without the Gospel, the question is to what ends?
If they only understood how that act did more damage to them than to the business owner; they would avoid it intensely.
I don’t know if you are aware there is a political movement to separate children from the Church and their families and have the government form them the way the political powers want them. However, the government knows nothing about the gospel. So, this is another government experiment that only will go horribly wrong it is going horribly wrong one of the fruits of it is that robbery.
It is the reason why you see, young people from the poorer communities beating unknown people on the street and stealing from shopkeepers. Again, if they only knew all the damage they do to others is nothing compared to what effects are happening to them. They are literally destroying themselves from the inside. However, no one is there to teach that because that lesson comes from the Gospel.
The gospel is not being preached. What is the gospel? That Jesus has come to teach us who we truly are to lead us to eternal life. Our only need is to co-operate with him and we will find the truth. Remember his line, where your treasure is there your heart is also.
Once we understand this then our priorities change. Then we learn that nothing in this world can promise us what Christ can. Then we see the world differently.
Back in 2002, there was a fairly rich woman from a community in the area I call the Volvo Belt. That is the rich communities between Route 128 and I 495. She came to say that there were priests in her town and we all that priests are all dangerous. A local media station recorded her talk obviously it was set up ahead of time. In the area of that corner, there were six drive-by shootings over the previous two years. Did the woman or the media care, no because they don’t care about the problems of the poor.
Let me ask you this question, what is your highest priority? What do you seek more than anything else? Is it a position? Is it a vehicle? Is it an address in a valued zip code? Or is it eternal life in Heaven? All those are acceptable as long as eternal life is the higher priority, otherwise, we get lost.
You may not know that when you first decide to get into communications, especially news and especially at the college level, you end up with unusual stories. Do you want to be a White House reporter? You start with the lower fruit. That is why I know of Betty and Barney Hill now deceased who was among the first people to claim they were abducted by aliens, in Exeter, NH no less.
Well, one of the stories, I covered was a meeting with an x rated movie director. For the record, I never saw the movie. I was in college and they sent me to a press meeting he had at the Presidential Suite in one of the local major hotels at the time. There was another reporter and me, I think the other reporter was from one of the alternative newspapers in the city at the time. I remember him saying how much he enjoyed the movie and color, etc. Obviously, I did not say anything to him but I wanted to say, you do realize people do not go to these movies for the color.
I will never forget one thing the director said. He said that he called his mother that morning to tell her that he had made it, he was now in the presidential suite of this hotel. He had the money and the power in a sense because he made it.
What about the poor, they have nothing. They can only rely on God and if they do not have God then they have nothing but their will to fight those who have everything or they also have despair. So the battle begins.
I will never forget when I was in Ecuador and saw intense poverty the likes of which I never saw. Now, remember, I grew up in the newspaper industry. My father wrote for the Boston Globe back when it was owned by the Taylors. I worked for them too as a janitor/security guard in college before joining the Navy. However, it was not until I was in Ecuador that I realized that the media is focused on the rich and not on the poor. I actually said a cryptic version of those words on Hardball and on MSNBC and CNN among other places.
Do you want peace, make sure you embrace the Gospel, live it and preach it to the poor? That brings peace and love. Do you want to see division and war grow? Make sure you tell people to ignore the gospel and allow their children to be brought up by the government.
The Gospel is not about feeling good although it can be, it is about living the truth that will set all free. Those who embrace Christ find life regardless of whether the are rich or poor those who reject the Gospel are on their own.
The Interesting Sign of the Presence of the Messiah