“Why do you serve the poor?” “Why do you spend time with the poor?” These two questions have been put to me recently, and they’ve gotten me thinking about my current life in inner city Edmonton’s “shelter district.” This is the place I call home, where, along with a handful of my fellow members of Madonna House Apostolate, we live in our “Marian Centre” mission house. There, we run a drop-in center. Folks come in for some breakfast food and a cup of coffee. Often, they stay for a nice long chat, or just chill awhile, for a quiet rest on a bench in our courtyard. Many of the folks who come by sleep out on the streets. Most are staying in the neighboring shelter. Others reside in nearby low-cost housing.
It’s not unusual to see some of our neighbors passed-out on the sidewalk, their heart rates slowed way down—sometimes brought to a complete stop– by opioids. It’s likewise not unusual to see folks slumping over in our own courtyard during the drop-in, under the influence of the same opioids. Nor is it unusual to see folks flailing their arms about, frantically, perhaps under the influence of crystal meth.
Often, the drugs folks get on the street here are an unpredictable mix of stimulants and sedatives.
It’s commonplace for folks to have to be woken up from a sleep from which they’d otherwise never return. Teams of first responders from Hope Mission or the Spady Centre periodically patrol the neighborhood, trying to shake folks awake, administering naloxone to get the body going again. But I haven’t seen these teams in awhile. Maybe they’re out more in the winter. And the Spady Centre recently moved out of this neighborhood. I periodically call 911, so that EMTs can come and put an oxygen mask on the blue-faced person lying in the back alleyway, and, if needed, bring them to the hospital. I’m always impressed with the EMTs, and they always come in quite a timely manner.
Not everyone who comes to our drop-in is using drugs. Many do use meth or fentanyl or crack. But many do not.
Everyone has their own story. Many have mental illness, but not all. Many of our friends who had been staying out on the street or in the shelter have managed to secure housing, and we’ve connected some with a job opportunity. Many of our friends disappear.
But these are the people we’ve been tasked to live among, as an expression of our life of poverty, chastity, and obedience, as members of Madonna House assigned to Marian Centre.
Appropriate locations in our neighborhood to ‘go to the bathroom’ are at a premium. The same can be said of locations for folks in the neighborhood to ‘make love.’ So both ‘activities’ are often done by our back dumpster, or somewhere in the back alley. And sometimes quite openly on the front sidewalk. Such are some of the features of the face of poverty in our neighborhood at this time.
On our wall here at Marian Centre, hanging beside our life-sized mural of “Christ in the Breadline,” is the mandate which Edmonton’s Archbishop had articulated for Marian Centre when we first got started here in 1955: we are “to relieve the sufferings of the poor in some mysterious way: alleviate the sufferings of Christ, who lives in the poor, the poor economically, culturally, and every other way.”
Is that what we’re up to?
Yes, I think it is.
In response to the question, “why do you serve the poor?”, another question arises in my heart: “Do I serve the poor?” And in response to the question, “why do you spend time with the poor?,” my response is, “To whom else can I go? If I do not spend time with the poor, is there anyone else left with whom I can spend time?
For indeed, we are all poor, are we not?”
Engaging the reading from St. Vincent de Paul in the Office of Readings for his Feast Day and sharing from my own experience here at Marian Centre, I’d like to reflect here upon these two questions—why do I serve the poor? Why do I spend time with the poor?— followed by a reflection on how becoming a servant as Jesus was—and in particular, becoming a servant of the poor— is a fundamental alternative to the ever-present temptation to make idols of power and honor. And, I’d like to conclude by suggesting that, perhaps more importantly than becoming a servant of the poor, I have the opportunity, in this neighborhood, to become, beyond a mere servant of the poor, a friend of the poor. I become a friend of the poor as a poor man myself, united in Christ the Poor Man. In turn, I am served by the poor, served by Christ in the poor. And the poor man Christ is served as my neighbors serve me and teach me, their poor brother and friend. In this neighborhood, I’m learning to count myself among Christ’s poor brothers and friends.
Do I serve the poor? Yes and No
Before being able to answer the question of why I serve the poor, I need to ask myself whether I actually do serve the poor. This is a very live question for me. After all, what am I doing for the poor? Am I doing my neighbors any good? Or is it more the case that my poor neighbors are serving me, and blessing my life?
Okay, so, I get cans of concentrated orange juice out of our walk–in cooler each morning. I mix in three cans of water for every can of orange juice concentrate. I put all that in a large thermos cooler, and I make a back-up supply each morning as well, in case the thermos empties out. Then I put milk in another thermos cooler. I usually help set up our tables and chairs. And then, when our gates open at 9:30, I tend to spend most of the time chatting at our drop-in with the folks who come in, many of whom have become some of my best friends.
It seems strange, then, to categorize this activity as “serving the poor.” It’s a routine not all that unlike all sorts of people’s morning routines, as people all about the planet have to get their things together each morning and go about their tasks.
I mix the orange juice and get the milk. Then I hang out awhile. So what?
Ok, so some of my friends don’t have their own place to stay, so they stay in the shelter next door. Does that mean that my life’s activity gets placed into some category distinct from anybody else’s life activity—that of ‘serving the poor’? Does the category ‘serving the poor’ really characterize what I’m up to?
Something in me prefers to think of my life’s activity here in this neighborhood as simply trying to do my part in my context, simply trying to do what a friend does among friends, what a neighbor does among neighbors.
Is there such a thing as “serving the poor”? That’s not what it’s about
My fellow Madonna House layman, Larry Klein, once told a group of guests at MH that when he lived at MH’s farm some years back, many young people came to Madonna House expressing a desire “to learn how to farm.” But Larry said there’s no such thing as “learning how to farm.” You learn how to plant carrots. You learn how to weed carrots. You learn how to repair fences. You learn how to collect eggs, how to harvest beans, how to try to protect your crops from groundhogs, etc. You learn one little thing at a time, keep trying it, keep practicing it, keep experimenting, keep learning—how to do one task, and then another, and then another.
Larry’s point was that farming doesn’t exist in the abstract, but consists, rather, of lots of little tasks, one after another. “Learning to farm” actually means learning one little thing after another.
Larry was responding to a tendency to be attracted to the idea of farming in the abstract. He wanted to help us see that it’s not so much a matter of “being a farmer” or not “being a farmer.” It’s a matter of doing this one small task after another small task, each task requiring its own attention, work, and diligence.
The same goes for “serving the poor.” It’s not so much about the idea of serving the poor as though it were a field of study that you might become an expert in or might get a degree in or might do as a day job from nine to five. It’s about opening this can of orange juice and mixing it with three cans of water. Why? Because our friends and neighbors will be showing up in half an hour, and some of them would like to have a glass of orange juice. It’s not so much about the idea of ‘serving the poor’ as it is about sharing a common interest in literature with Stevie, or having a common appreciation for hockey with Dean, or having a shared interest in politics with Derek. When I sit down with Ted for a cup of coffee, it’s not so much about ‘serving the poor’ as it is about connecting with a neighbor and friend. When I wash the table afterwards, its not so much about “serving the poor” as it is about washing a table that needs to be cleaned—the table that Mike was sitting at.
And of course, to know that it’s time to wash that table, I don’t need to calculate the income (or lack of income) of the guy who was sitting there. It’s not so much about trying to ‘serve the poor’ as it is about trying to be human.
It is About Serving the Poor
But then again, washing the table at our drop-in in inner city Edmonton is about serving the poor. Because it’s about being human in a neighborhood in which the divine image imprinted on every human face is disfigured in a peculiarly striking way.
Christ suffers in the drug addict. Christ suffers in my friend who is alienated from his family, whose marriage is broken, whose bridges in the professional world have collapsed, or who has busted out of the ‘rez,’ and who is now homeless.
St. Vincent de Paul, exemplary servant and friend of the poor, was so insistent upon this gospel identification of Christ with the poor that he insisted that
if a needy person requires medicine or other help during prayer time, do whatever has to be done with peace of mind. Offer the deed to God as your prayer. Do not become upset or feel guilty because you interrupted your prayer to serve the poor. God is not neglected if you leave him for such service. One of God’s works is merely interrupted so that another can be carried out. So when you leave prayer to serve some poor person, remember that this very service is performed for God (emphasis added).
And so, there is an added impetus in washing this particular table, because, from the perspective of a world that idolizes honor and power, this friend of mine (or this stranger) who ate at this table, is, in an acute way, powerless and without honor. That is, he seems to be a failure. He is not managing to live by the fruit of his labor. He may or may not have an opportunity to work. For whatever reason, he’s likely not employed. He likely has no place to call his own.
Which means that in a particular way, Christ identifies with the person who ate at this table. “It is our duty to prefer the service of the poor to everything else and to offer such service as quickly as possible,” St. Vincent insists. In washing that table—according to the Gospel rationale of St. Vincent— I wash that table for Christ.
We’re All Poor
But of course, any table that I wash—whether at a drop-in or in a wealthy person’s home or at a restaurant—is a table that I can wash for Christ, whatever the economic status of the person who sat there. Christ is in all of us.
So, I return to the point I made earlier: when the question is posed, “why do I spend time with the poor,” something in me asks, “who else is there to spend time with? For who isn’t poor?” That is to say, who isn’t in want, in one way or another?
For St. Vincent, “when we visit the poor and needy, we try to be understanding where they are concerned. We sympathize with them so fully that we can echo Paul’s words: I have become all things to all men.”
When I first arrived here in Edmonton a year ago, I wrestled with a sense I had of an unbridgeable chasm between me and my destitute neighbors. Sometimes, in an attempt to bridge that chasm, I intentionally tried to blend in with my destitute neighbors. It was right around that time that one of the guys in the neighborhood, Goose, came up to me and said: “You graduated from high school, with honors. I know it!” It was like he had caught me red-handed, and he was letting me know that he saw me commit the very crime I was trying to pretend I hadn’t committed. Goose went on: “I never went to high school.” And he walked away, without a further word. It was like he was saying to me: “I see straight through you. There is an unbridgeable gap between me and you, and it can’t be bridged. So stop pretending to be like me.”
I shared this story by email with Steve, my fellow MH layman back in Combermere. I wrote to him about my sense of an unbridgeable chasm between me and the poor man Lazarus, a chasm that exists not just in the afterlife between the rich man in Hades and Lazarus in the bosom of Abraham, but a chasm that even now, before the afterlife, I can’t bridge— even if I try.
I can make a promise of poverty and go without all sorts of things. But I still have means and access to things which Goose never had access to and never will. I still have access to an expansive social infrastructure and capacity for mobility, the likes of which Goose will never have. Even if I renounce that access and that capacity for mobility in the name of poverty, it’s still there. I still have mental health, which Goose will likely never have either.
Steve wrote back to me about this sense of a chasm separating the rich man from Lazarus, that chasm separating me from Goose. This sense, Steve said, “has got to be one of the painful purifying fires through which, in a mysterious way, we ourselves become poor and empty. There will always be someone poorer than we are and thus, our identification somehow is truly from within, where the real poor man is. For some reason, the poor can sense either the poor man and/or the rich man in us. We can spend a while ‘pretending’ to be poor for the sake of the poor. And they will also sense that.”
However, Steve said, Christ, “the real Poor One, knows it all, sees it all, and has mercy on us all.” He has mercy on us and leads us as “he leads us to His own poverty. The pain of experiencing the chasm can be a salvific one. We all stand naked before the Almighty, begging for mercy.”
Here’s what Steve’s reflection helped me to see: my identification with the poor doesn’t happen by a fabricated poverty—something only a rich man can afford to try to fabricate! My identification with the poor happens by way of a slow, deepened awareness of the truth of my own utter poverty before God.
The Significance of the Materially Poor
The materially poor man—someone who lacks means— functions as something of a sign of what all of us actually are before God. We all stand without means, utterly helpless before the creator on whom our being depends. But our material and cultural resources often obscure this truth from our heart’s vision. Goose, as a man without a home and without a high school degree, is a sign of what I actually am. That I have a stable place to stay and a few degrees under my belt can all too easily cause me to forget that I am a poor man before God, utterly dependent upon him for everything. In truth, in relation to God, I am utterly helpless, utterly destitute, utterly in need of both his material provision and his mercy.
In that way, at this most fundamental level, Goose and I aren’t actually all that different from one another. Sure, a chasm exists between us, in that I am not homeless and he is, in that I have a formal education and he does not, in that I have mental health, and he suffers from mental illness.
But I am not the source of my housing, nor am I the source of my education, nor of my mental health.
So Goose, as a materially poor man, is a sign and reminder to me of what I actually am, a poor man without means—at least none of which are derived from me. I am, in truth, utterly dependent on God for material and spiritual and mental well-being. In this sense, there is no gap to bridge between me and Goose. We’re in the same place, poor creatures in need of God to provide food, clothing, shelter, in need of salvation, in need of God to grant us mercy.
A Kingdom of Servants Under the Servant-King: Opposing the Idolization of Honor and Power
The point I’d like to make here is not to demonize power and honor, but rather to show how responding to Christ’s call to become a servant— a slave— serves as a fundamental antidote to our propensity to make idols of power and honor. As Bishop Barron has put it, “power is not, in itself, a bad thing. And the same is true of honor. Thomas Aquinas said that honor is the flag of virtue. It’s a way of signaling to others something that’s worth noticing.” What, then, is the problem?, Barron asks.
Commenting on Matthew 20:20-28, Barron recounts how “the mother of James and John asks Jesus on their behalf to place them in high places in his kingdom.” Barron points out here, as he does frequently elsewhere, “there are four classic substitutes for God: wealth, pleasure, power, and honor.” And, in this Gospel story, “the two brothers specifically want the last two,” namely, power and honor. “The problem,” Barron explains, is that James and John “are asking for these two things in the wrong spirit.” For indeed, “the ego will want to use power not for God’s purposes or in service of truth, beauty, and goodness, but for its own aggrandizement and defense.” And the same goes for honor: “when honor is sought for its own sake or in order to puff up the ego, it becomes dangerous as well.”
This is where serving the poor comes back into the conversation. “What’s the way out?” Barron asks. “Jesus tells us: ‘Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave.’” In sum, as Barron puts it, “when you serve others, when you become the least, you are accessing the power of God and seeking the honor of God.”
Like James and John, we easily get caught up in pursuing honor and power, while Christ, the king of the universe, exercises his kingship, his power, and lives a life of honor, precisely by descending down into powerlessness and into places of dishonor. And it is love that drives him to do so. What Our Lord says to the disciples here is that true greatness is found in serving at the bottom, and the first place is truly the place of the servant (or slave). As St. Vincent again eloquently and frankly puts it: “We also ought to have this same spirit” of Christ who was sent to the poor “and imitate Christ’s actions, that is, we must take care of the poor, console them, help them, support their cause.”
Serving, then, is valuable, regardless of the economic status of the person I’m serving. And regardless of the economic status of the person I’m serving, the person I’m serving is, in a very real sense, poor—even if I’m giving a glass of orange juice to Elon Musk or Donold Trump or Joe Biden.
However, there’s something to be said for serving those at the bottom of society’s social latter. To become a servant of those at the bottom gives me a chance to let my heart plunge down beneath that bottom, to be a servant at the bottom, where our Lord has a special desire to serve and to be served. “With renewed devotion,” St. Vincent suggests, “we must serve the poor, especially outcasts and beggars.” For as St. Vincent puts it, “they have been given to us as our masters and patrons.”
Concretely, this can bite sometimes. As St. Vincent observes, “the poor are often rough and unrefined.” It’s not unusual for some of the folks at our drop-in to get a bit demanding. It’s all-too easy for me, in such cases, to act out of my position of means, considering the fact that I represent Marian Centre, and I don’t have to do what our guests ask of me. I’m not making any money off of them. I have no contract with them. They’re not my boss. Our guests can’t fire me. They aren’t giving me a check or a tip. I don’t, therefore, depend upon them. At least not in a worldly sense.
In truth, I have power, as a member of Marian Centre, in that, we are gratuitously hosting our guests, and, from a worldly perspective, I owe them nothing. They are in our house, after all, so we set the rules, we call the shots.
But again, that’s only part of the story, and if we stop there, we have a limited, worldly perspective.
Of course, even from a gospel perspective, it’s not always appropriate to do everything we’re asked to do. Some requests are simply dysfunctional or inappropriate, or are simply beyond our capacity or beyond what the Lord has for us to do. And setting limits and boundaries and saying ‘no’ to a brother or sister is sometimes the best way to honor their dignity.
But rather than assuming the go-to (though usually unconsciously assumed) position of power, rather than thinking in terms of these guys getting a free meal from us, I find it helpful to remember that from a kingdom perspective, these are God’s representatives. As St. Vincent rightly insists, “if you consider the poor in the light of faith, then you will observe that they are taking the place of the Son of God who chose to be poor.” I’m dependent on them for a living (in the Kingdom), as much as much as I’m dependent on Christ. As St. Vincent points out, Christ “went so far as to say that he would consider every deed which either helps or harms the poor as done for or against himself.” It’s not just mere politeness and diplomacy that drove St. Vincent to withhold judgment when dealing with the poor. It’s because the poor are God’s vicars in relation to me, the representatives of Christ who will judge me. They resemble Christ who “in his passion… almost lost the appearance of a man and was considered a fool by the Gentiles and a stumbling block by the Jews,” St. Vincent reminds us.
This is why for St. Vincent, “we must not judge” the rough poor “from external appearances nor from the mental gifts they seem to have received.” It’s from these characters that are tougher to get along with that I need to turn for a letter of recommendation for the Kingdom— from the poor precisely in their unattractiveness. Again, as St. Vincent poignantly puts it, “we hope that God will love us for the sake of the poor.” They are indeed our letter of recommendation.
It’s not at all difficult, in subtle, unconscious, unintended ways, to exercise authority over these folks whom we welcome at our drop-in. Of course, sometimes we need to exercise authority, and to set some boundaries. However, if at all possible, I think it’s worth making as our starting point the presupposition that I am first of all a servant of these patrons, just like if I were a waiter at a restaurant. And, hopefully, my service can extend beyond that of a mere waiter. Just as a waiter or waitress may at times need to set some firm boundaries between them and their patrons, we need to do so in our context. But if I do need to set a boundary or exercise some authority on behalf of Marian Centre in relation to our patrons, I need to do so precisely as their servant, and not as their overlord.
To regard myself as a servant of these patrons, to regard myself as available and at their service and therefore beneath them in a very real sense, can be both a bitter and a purifying, even liberating experience. To get down on my hands and knees, figuratively speaking, and sometimes literally speaking, to help someone with mangled hands and feet to get socks on his feet, and to wash the feet of my poor neighbors (figuratively, or maybe even literally), is one step on the way to defying honor and power as idols and participating in the honor and power of Christ the King and slave.
St. Vincent tells us that Christ showed “that his mission was to preach to the poor.” Indeed, Christ himself says in the Gospels, quoting the prophecy of Isaiah, that he was sent precisely “to preach the good news to the poor.” If “Christ willed to be born poor,” as St. Vincent adamantly reminds us was indeed the case, am I not to follow him in this poverty? Indeed, St. Vincent goes on, Christ “chose for himself disciples who were poor. He made himself the servant of the poor and shared their poverty.” Such is a key aspect of the way of discipleship in service of the poor Christ.
It’s about holding someone dear to your heart. As St. Vincent reminds us, God holds the materially poor especially dear to his hear: “Since God surely loves the poor, he also loves those who love the poor. For when one person holds another dear, he also includes in his affection anyone who loves or serves the one he loves.” But it’s not just “the materially poor” as such whom we’re loving here. We’re loving individual persons—true friends.
The Dash of the Towel and the Water
One of our friends and patrons, I’ll call her Kyra, shares a birthday with one of Madonna House’s members who has long been assigned to Marian Centre, Janet. Kyra recruited me to draw a birthday card for Janet for when we had a combined birthday party for the two of them. I couldn’t come up with anything for the card until five minutes before the party, even though I had been thinking about it for weeks. And, in those last five minutes before the party, it suddenly came to me: “the dash of the towel and the water.” A picture came to my heart’s eye of Janet running through our dining room, rushing from one person to the next, with a towel, a washbowl, and a pitcher of water.
This, for me, was an image of what I saw Janet’s life as in our drop-in center, rushing from one person to the next to serve them, to wash their feet—sometimes by way of meeting material needs (getting someone a belt or a pair of socks or a cup of coffee) but more fundamentally and more often, meeting the needs of someone’s heart—connecting, smiling, listening, entering into mutual friendship.
Just Being Friends
When it comes down to it, in this neighborhood, the best service we can offer, I think, is spending time with those who are materially poor, entering into mutual friendship. This is where the chasm between the rich man and Lazarus can begin to disappear. This is where Ivan’s distresses are my own, and Ivan’s joys are my own: “we must try to be stirred by our neighbors’ worries and distress,” as well as by their joys. For true friends share in these things. This is when Trevor can realize that most fundamentally I’m not a waiter or a servant or a vending machine for new socks or bread pudding, but that I’m a friend, a brother, another self, a fellow beggar before the Lord, a fellow poor man, united in the Poor Christ. This is what happens when Stevie gets up and gets a cup of coffee for me. This is when Misty gets me a lunch. This is when Ethan is coaching me in floor hockey. This is entering into friendship.
I think that’s why I serve the poor, that’s why I spend time with the poor: because Christ enters our lives both to serve us and to be our friends. Serving the poor is just a temporary step on our way to realizing our own poverty, and therefore being made free to be a poor man among poor men in the Poor Christ. “I call you servants no longer, but friends,” (Jn 15:15) Our Lord said. And just as his entry into servitude to us reaches its profound heights and depths in his becoming friends with us, our entry into the lives of our materially poor neighbors reaches its profound heights and depths as they enter into friendship with us.