There is a famous story in my religious community when we first went to Mexico. The parish was in a very poor area and the new pastor was going around visiting the people to get to know them. One elderly woman slipped a few pesos into the priest’s hands as he was leaving. She whispered to him, “This is for the poor.” When he looked around at her house with a tin roof and dirt floor and a pot of beans for supper he was surprised. “Who are the poor?” he asked her. “The poor are those who do not know God,” she answered. Our affluent culture experiences a poverty of the soul every bit as debilitating as those who lack for this world’s goods.
