August 26, 2009

A universal call to charity: poverty is born from isolation

By Johathan Reyes

 The following is the final installment in a series on Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical, “Love in Truth” (“Caritas in Veritate”).

In his recent encyclical “Love in Truth,” the Holy Father makes a rather startling connection between poverty, in all of its forms, and human isolation.  In his chapter on the human family, he writes:  “If we look closely at other kinds of poverty, including material forms, we can see that they are born from isolation, from not being loved or from difficulties in being able to love” (53).

This is a bold claim.  After all, poverty for many of us is most often associated with certain material causes such as unjust social structures, poor government, war and civil strife, dislocation, poor economic systems, psychological troubles and addictions, or perhaps natural disaster.  Of course these and other factors are at work in poverty and need to be addressed.  Still, where one encounters poverty, one inevitably also encounters human isolation.

This is certainly the testimony of the many men and women I work with who are serving the poor in northern Colorado.  Whether they are counseling youth, teaching life skills, housing the homeless, caring for the elderly or providing emergency assistance, they have all encountered the profound connection between poverty and isolation and the deep human need for communion.  It makes all the difference whether someone in need of help finds a functionary or a friend when he comes for help.  Any effort to address poverty that limits the love of neighbor to a brief interview that ends with a check or a place to sleep fails to engage the fundamental root of poverty, isolation. 

This was an insight shared by many of those from the last century who have been celebrated across the political spectrum for their service to the poor.  It is evident in the decision of men and women like Mother Teresa, Cesar Chavez, Father de Foucauld (whose life inspired the founding of the Little Brothers of Jesus) and Dorothy Day, to share the life of those they served through a vow of voluntary poverty and the formation of communities.  It was not enough for them to give material things to those in need or to advocate for them, they also saw the need to share life with them. 

Voluntary poverty for these men and women was not a political stunt chosen as a means to make the rich and powerful feel guilty.  Nor was it motivated by a romantic desire for “authenticity.”  It would be a disservice to their memory to reduce their decisions to such superficial ends.  For Day, Chavez, Mother Teresa and many others, the free decision to live in poverty in community was a decision to end isolation.  They all understood that the greatest gift to those in need, the one that addressed the deepest roots of poverty, was friendship. 

This truth is profoundly evident in the memoirs of Archbishop Kazimierz Majdanski, “You Shall Be My Witnesses,” which recount his years in the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau.  Even here, facing the most extreme poverty, stripped not only of material goods but of freedom and human dignity as well, the prisoners were able to give to one another the gift of friendship.   And it was friendship—communion—that made a life of utter poverty bearable. 

Understanding the link between poverty and isolation helps explain why the Church has never been satisfied with a definition of charity that does not involve real contact with those in need.  To give materially is a good thing, but that alone cannot address isolation.  What we must give to those in need is friendship.  Of course, it is not given to all of us to be able to make the heroic decision to live voluntary poverty.  It is not God’s call to all of us.   Still, it is His universal call that in addition to giving of our material goods, we also befriend the friendless whenever we can.  Whatever our station in life, we can confront isolation in those around us.

In the end, as the Holy Father makes clear, all human friendship and communion is rooted in friendship with Christ.  It is by virtue of our all having the same Creator and Redeemer that isolation is ultimately and forever defeated.  Death itself, which is the ultimate isolation, finds its answer only in friendship with God.  Thus, even as we give of ourselves in friendship, we cannot be content to give only ourselves.  We must at the same time allow Christ to love others through us.  Only in this way can we fully respond to the universal call to charity. 

Jonathan Reyes is president and CEO of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Denver.