Blessed are the Poor

Martin Newell’s Home Office Vigil Reflection.

“Woe to the rich” (Luke 6:24)

Christ the Shepherd, Jaroslav, 2025

Those words are probably the least quoted words in the Gospels. They’re not popular, especially in rich countries. “Happy – or Blessed – are the poor” (Luke 6:20) is at least more popular.

But who are the rich and poor today, in the world we live in? It helps to understand our context. Despite there being a debate about whether global inequality is rising or falling, it is clearly true to say that there has never been a bigger gap between the richest and the poorest in human history. While Elon Musk is worth $400bn, and the super-mega-rich can talk of space tourism and going to live on other planets, millions of the poorest globally still die young, even in childhood, of preventable diseases, lack of clean water, and not having enough to eat. Obviously, we can see refugees desperately seeking a new life in the UK and Europe, risking their lives crossing the Mediterranean and the English Channel, and those who arrive here as among the poor, among those most vulnerable, suffering and in need of safety and welcome. And what happens on our borders reveals a wider truth: that the poverty and suffering of the poorest is not an accident, but the result of deliberate policy decisions designed to protect and enhance the place and wealth of the rich minority.

I think it’s also true to say that the biggest class divisions in the world are not between the working class and middle and upper classes, but between those who have access to “First World” lifestyles, passports and social security systems, and those who don’t. And it is the gulf that still exists between these worlds of Dives and Lazarus (as in Jesus’ parable in Luke’s Gospel) that is both a push and pull factor in driving global migration. But it would be good to dig a little deeper.

Catholic Workers used to talk a lot about being at the heart of Empire. We compared ourselves to the people of Rome in the time of Jesus. Jesus lived and died, was executed, on the margins, the peripheries, of Empire. But the early Christians in Rome had to work out what it meant to follow Jesus while living at the heart of that same Empire. We – Catholic Workers – saw ourselves in a similar situation. Catholic Workers in the US certainly live in the heart of a global Imperial power. And in London, we live in a similar place, where there is a concentration of economic, financial, political and military power. Such a place is crying out for communities of faith and resistance, to stand in places such as this place of power – the Home Office.

Ched Myers in his book Who Will Roll Away the Stone: Discipleship Queries for First World Christians, compared our situation to that of Peter, warming his hands by the fire while Jesus was being tortured nearby: like Peter, we are warming our hands with the minor privileges of Empire, while off stage we can hear the screams of the crucified of our times being tortured.  And so Catholic Workers talked about repenting from the privileges of Empire, and resisting its violence and injustice from within.

These days, the talk on the political left is more about de-colonisation than resisting Empire. I guess it essentially means the same thing. Working for the end of Empire, or Empires. While the age of the visible European Empires is over, the spirit of colonialism lives on.

Interestingly, it seems to me that the voices calling for de-colonisation often start from the global south. Which seems very right and to the point. And to me, they often seem to be the same voices that criticise things like “white saviourism” and “Band Aid” type portrayals of Africa and Africans as all being poor, starving wretches who need westerners to come over and save them.

I mention this partly because it strikes me that these days, pretty much every country in the world has what might be called a “First World Sector” and a “Third World Sector” – and others in between, but in very different proportions in different countries. Visually, virtually every country has a city with at least a district that looks like a west European city, for example. As a result of this increased prosperity in the global south, there are articulate voices from every country demanding respect, equal voices and economic equality, and saying “we don’t want to be represented like THAT! We don’t need your charity, your help, we need you to take your foot off our necks!” Revolutions are usually started by those who have newly entered the educated aspiring middle classes, who still feel they are being kept out of true freedom, opportunity and respect. It seems to me that the same is happening around the world today.

Those who make it to our shores are not from among the poorest in the world. The poorest might be lucky if they can make it to the nearest border or refugee camp. But those who do arrive carry with them the voices of their people, as well as sending money back home out of whatever they have, whether that is little or plenty, as witnessed to by the adverts on the tube for such things as the Remitly app.

As distressing as it is when there is so much suffering along the way, the great flow of migration at this time in history also represents something positive, that more and more people have the resources, the opportunity, the drive and the energy to seek and find a better life for themselves and their families. At the same time, as Pope Francis has said, there is such a thing as “internal colonialism”, such that at least some of the voices we hear from the global south don’t represent the poor at all, but the local elites, who may identify themselves more as part of the rich world, while happening to live in exile among the “great unwashed”.

I could go on, but I’ve said enough. Let us pray for soft hearts and open ears to hear the cries of the crucified of today, wherever and whoever they are, and to hear what the Spirit is saying to the Churches.