One is truly poor when no one cares
The parable of the prodigal son is a familiar one; its moral and meaning have been presented in many ways. But Jesus, in its telling, used the story for a very specific purpose. As Monsignor Edward Buelt describes it in A New Friendship, “Here Jesus gives us a clue as to what true poverty is—both physical poverty and poverty of spirit. Even when materially destitute after having squandered his inheritance, the son was not completely impoverished. Even when a natural crisis erupted in the form of famine, he still hadn’t reached rock bottom. Even when longing to eat the same husks he was feeding to the pigs, he still wasn’t completely broken. Lower still than all these depths, than all these poverties, his deepest poverty lay in the fact that no one cared for him. One is truly poor when no one cares. The true inheritance the younger son wasted was neither his money nor his possessions. It was his father’s care. Only when he understood that no one else cared for him did he understand how much his father did.” [Emphasis mine]
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One is truly poor when no one cares.” When one is forgotten, unloved and uncared for, when one is alone and isolated, that is the cruelest form of poverty. It is the poverty of the spirit that Jesus warns us throughout the gospels. When asked which is the greatest commandment he tells us “
You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself” [Mt 22:37-39].
Jesus teaches us that love of God and love of neighbor are so tightly intertwined that they are nearly equal in importance. You cannot love God if you do not love your neighbor; if you love your neighbor, you will, as a direct and immediate result, love God.
But, as the scholar of the law asked — and as we often ask — “…who is my neighbor” [Lk 10:29]? The simplest answer and the most accurate one is anyone who was created in the image and likeness of God, that is, everyone is your neighbor. The poor in spirit cannot be determined by outward signs of success or failure, but rather by their incapacity to love and to care for others.
Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta once said that “The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.” and “The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved.” We will each be judged by the measure of love and care we gave to those less fortunate. For most of us providing a loaf of bread or a can of soup is a simple, easy gesture. Offering our love and tender mercy to those who feel unloved, unwanted, alone, and isolated is a much more difficult thing to do.
