How We Can Walk With the Poor

Fr Oskar Wermter SJ reflects on poverty through the lens of the great Catholic activist Dorothy Day.

We are surrounded by poor people, but what do we mean by poverty?

I think we should take “extra lessons” about that complex issue from a lay woman, Dorothy Day — who lived from 1897-1980, and is now the subject of a sainthood cause. Dorothy struggled with that question for most of her adult life as a social activist, promoter of charity, founder of “houses of hospitality” for homeless people, pacifist, and writer on human dignity and justice.

As a young journalist and writer, and not yet a Catholic, Dorothy Day was passionately concerned about the poor, their needs, the responsibility of the state for homeless migrants and our responsibility as individuals walking with Christ for our brothers and sisters who suffer from neglect, famine and lack of living space. When she converted to Catholicism, she brought her social concern into the Church.

Much later, after years of being engaged in works of charity, she said: “We have never faltered in our conviction…that hospices such as our Houses of Hospitality are a vital necessity in times like these. We are down in the slums, but we can never be as poor as Christ, or as those ragged and destitute ones who come to us in the morning to be fed. We are constantly overcome with a sense of shame because we have so much more than these others.”

Her concern about poverty and the poor was not academic or theoretical. It was extremely practical. “When we succeed in persuading our readers [of The Catholic Worker newspaper, which she published] to take the homeless into their homes, then we will be known as Christians because of the way we love one another. We should have hospices in all the poor parishes.”

Dorothy made a clear distinction between poverty and destitution.

Destitution renders people helpless, possessing nothing and unable to free themselves from their misery. Destitution, as a condition, was for Dorothy in every way despicable and undesirable. It had to be overcome. The destitute seemed to be in a hopeless situation and great misery. They had to get out of this misery by being given a chance to work, obtain a small income so that they could live in “decent poverty”, which is very different from naked destitution. “Some of our houses have a decent poverty, which means that the men are reasonably fed and sheltered in a certain amount of poor comfort which they mainly make for themselves,” she wrote.

Peter Maurin, the son of French peasants and a promoter of Catholic Social Teachings in theory and practice, worked for many years with Dorothy in their Houses of Hospitality and on farms where the poor would work and live in community. He never tired of teaching all who cared to listen: “Reach the people through voluntary poverty (going without the luxuries in order to have the essentials) and through the works of mercy (mutual aid and a philosophy of labour).” Theory and practice: Peter wanted the workers to be thinkers, and the thinkers to be (manual) workers.

Voluntary poverty

Dorothy insisted on “voluntary poverty” for herself and for her co-workers in the Catholic Worker movement. “Voluntary poverty was a means to an end, not only a way to reassure those they were helping that the [Catholic] Worker shared in their poverty and was not simply giving away what they didn’t need, but also as a way of helping to address societal imbalances.”

I know that when religious, who have made a vow of voluntary poverty, happen to be together and chat about the people they meet on a daily basis, some may well speak with disdain about beggars who knock at their doors. The poor who come for charity are deemed to be useless people. You do not have to be concerned about them — that is a common conclusion — because they are liars. Since they are not telling the truth, you have no obligation to come to their aid. It’s an easy excuse!

Even the heartbreaking stories they invent for you to take pity on them are part of their poverty. If our response is sarcasm and irony, if we merely ridicule them and chase them away with harsh words, we only drive them more deeply into their misery, their isolation and their self-contempt as outcasts. Such unfortunate encounters confirm the poor in their view that you are rich, without sympathy or understanding for them as the poor and miserable of this earth.

For Dorothy, voluntary poverty “was a basic necessity if you wanted to help others without hypocrisy. It was also a form of resistance and generosity”. She wanted herself and the charity workers to lead a truly poor life, without luxuries but not in misery and squalor, and walk with the poor and excluded who are seeking sustenance and a life of dignity. True charity wants to delve more deeply into the real truth about the lives of the needy. “Take less so others have more.”

We should seek the encounter with the poor (or excluded) and make them part of our lives. That is why Dorothy Day and her Catholic Worker movement set up Houses of Hospitality and wanted to see such houses in every parish. Certainly there should be a network of charity workers’ groups in every parish (for example in the form of branches of the St Vincent de Paul Society), so that the helpers can visit the needy within their neighbourhood. This work is not reserved for “professional” Church workers like priests and religious, but should engage also volunteers from the Christian community.

Ready to go to jail

Dorothy, while working with a vast network of Houses of Hospitality, published her own newspaper — The Catholic Worker, which is still appearing in our time. Beside writing for the newspaper, she joined trade unions and demonstrated with them for just wages and living conditions, she went to prison for opposing conscription into the army, and opposed war as a pacifist. And in all these many activities, she lived in the presence of God.

Jesus was never far from the poor. His Spirit will open our eyes for the needs of the poor and enable us to give them of our time and accept them. “Blessed are the poor in spirit” (Matthew 5:33) who have a heart for the poor, the homeless, the hungry and those infected by diseases. If we are thus blessed and “poor in heart”, we will not bang the door shut in their faces or hurt them with harsh words. We will practise “voluntary poverty” and keep the door open.

“Walking with the poor” means taking their burdens on our shoulders. When Dorothy was asked by a doctor in a mental hospital why she bothered about mental patients in her house, she explained: “It is no light burden to place on others. It is placed there by Christ who said, ‘Take up your cross and follow me’. And that cross is our brother… It is easy to love one’s friends, those who are naturally lovable, but [quoting Dostoevsky’ Brothers Karamazov] ‘love in practice is a harsh and dreadful thing’.”

Loving the poor, the miserable, and mentally disturbed makes us share in their burdens, feel the poverty, experience the contempt in which they are being held, and share in their confusion of mind. “It seems that to love is to suffer,” Dorothy said, and this “suffering drives us to prayer”. You can carry a cross only in communion with Christ, in his presence, receiving it in prayer.

Destitution prevents us from engaging in mercy and compassion. “Without poverty, decent poverty, with sufficient food, shelter and clothing, we cannot get out of the morass we are in,” Dorothy Day said. “Certainly, too, we can do nothing without the works of mercy — an expression of our love for our neighbour to show our love for our God.”

Fr Oskar Wermter is a Jesuit priest in Harare.

This article was published in the March 2022 issue of The Southern Cross magazine.