Missionaries of the Sacred

On Sept. 20, 2009, Elmhurst College presented its highest honor, the Neibuhr Medal, to this extraordinary servant of humanity. Established in 1995, the Neibuhr Medal advances the tradition of Elmhurst College alumni Reinhold and H. Richard Niebuhr, who were among the most influential and compassionate theologians and public intellectuals of the last century.

The remarks Fr. Gutierrez made were insightful and enlightening. His 50 years of ministry of teaching comes from a deep conviction of God’s love of the poor. It is a scandal to have the poor in a Christian continent, so many persons living in such debilitating conditions. In order to deliver the message of God’s love, a person needs to have respect for the suffering of the poor.

One of the points Fr. Gutierrez made is that the bible says little about poverty but much is said about the poor. The poor includes more than those who suffer economic conditions. They include those who suffer because of language, color and gender. Some people distance themselves from the situation of the poor by considering poverty as a fate. Poverty is not a fate because it has human causes. The conditions of the poor have been spiritualized by equating their poverty with a condition of sin. Others have equated the status of wealth with the hieratical structure of the more privileged person, a higher class.

In order to engage the situation of the poor, a person can have solidarity with the suffering of others. Fighting for justice is changing the social structures.  Sometimes it means changing mental categories. For instance, many people envision that western culture is superior. Some men promote the superiority of men over women. These are cultural structures that come from a mentality which can be changed.

Poverty is a theological problem, showing the work of the gospel concerning the situation of the poor, the discriminated against, the marginalized and the alienated. A basic theme of Deuteronomy is the constant reminder that the people of God were taken by God from tyranny and given the land as a covenantal right. They are to treat the foreigner better than they were treated when they were in a foreign land. In God’s eyes, the last are treated with the same day’s wages as the first.

In the ultimate analysis poverty means death. The poor person is dying before their time. For instance, Africa is the tragedy of humanity. The drugs that fight the HIV virus are available to the stronger economies in the world such as the United States and Western Europe. Yet in several African countries, the poor can’t afford these drugs, especially when the drug companies won’t allow generic brands that can be made locally. There is no margin of survival in the world of poverty in Africa. Poverty is death.

Liberation Theology was marginalized in the discipline of Theology by listing it as “contextual theology”. But all theology is contextualized in the condition of humanity. Each person is a citizen of a culture, a country and a time. The work of the gospel isn’t reflected in a vacuum but in the situation of each person in their world. Doing theology is reflecting on the daily life of the poor.

The preferential option for the poor is following the way of Jesus who was incarnated in the form of a person. Jesus became poor, stripped of all divinity in order to focus the human person as the object of God’s love. Our option is to have friendship with the poor. As Jesus chose to live a relationship with each person so we choose to live in a relationship with the “little ones”. In the parable of the Good Samaritan, the wounded man is the center of the story. He needed a relationship with the care giver. Others had relationships with duties and obligations and cultural implications. The Samaritan developed a relationship with the wounded man and entered his world of suffering.

A person asked Fr Gutierrez if he would write his first book the same today as he did in the past. As an answer Fr Gutierrez asked the man if he felt the same about his wife as he did twenty years earlier. He said no. My love has deepened and I would describe her differently. So, he said, I have grown deeper in my relationship with God and my relationship with the poor.

The evening was an inspiration to live the charism of the MSC Spirituality of the Heart. I will end with a quote by Fr Gustavo Gutierrez, “It is no longer possible for some one to say, ‘Well, I didn’t know’ about the suffering of the poor. Poverty has a visibility today that it did not have in the past.  The faces of the poor must now be confronted.”