7/6/2012 – Friday of 13th week in ordinary time – Amos 8:4-6, 9-12

           The message of many of the prophets of ancient proclaimed to the people that they would be judged as a society as to how they treated the poorest and neediest – the least among them.  Amos tells the people will punish those who trample the needy and who destroy the poor of the land.  The message from the prophet cuts to our hearts, doesn’t it?  Yet, I sometimes wonder what it means to help the poor, to empower them, to give them a hand up rather than a hand down.  When I was a young adult, I joined the Peace Corps and headed to West Africa, I spent years as a missionary working in a soup kitchen in Canada and working in development projects and in education in the jungles of Ecuador.  I became a follower of Liberation theology, a movement in Church that helps the poor help themselves.  Yet, through all of this, I have more questions than answers.  And after living for many years in the Mississippi Delta, I see all the warts and flaws of our social welfare system taken to the extreme, how good intentions destroy many lives and take away their human dignity. 

         The Lord hears the cry of the poor.  The Lord calls us to a special love for the poor.  We need to figure out what that means.  And believe me, that is easier said than done.