Often enough we have a statistical grasp of "the poor". Seventy percent of the "the poor" are women and children, forty percent of minorities are among "the poor," one out of every five children are born into poverty. While statistics can help us to understand the severity of poverty in America and around the globe, these numbers often strip the human face off "the poor". Instead of persons with stories and lives of their own, we come to see "the poor" as a number, a percentile, a problem which must be approached mathematically. Statistics transform "the poor" into a faceless mass, a growing cancer in our society.

Or perhaps "the poor" are made into victims, objects of our charity and care, the recipients of our pity. We raise monies for "the poor," collect clothes or foodstuff for "the poor," make an effort to remember "the poor" at Christmas. In this way "the poor" are merely the needy and passive recipients of our care; unfortunate and helpless creatures without faces, dignity or control of their lives. "The poor" need charity, our help, and thrive on our guilt.

In all of this we are tempted to shun "the poor" because they are such a painful reminder of our own frailty, of our own weakness. "The poor" represent for the wealthiest and most consumerist society in the world a kind of hell. "The poor" are our image of hell, just as winning the lottery is our image of heaven. We have come to believe that there is nothing worse than poverty and so we are driven to see "the poor" as the economic equivalent of "the poor". They are a place where the God of America does not go.

With all of that in mind I invite you to consider for a moment the story of one of these "poor". We are speaking about a young woman, a teenager living in a small war torn Mid-East country where a minor and vicious tyrant has been placed upon the throne and shored up with significant amounts of military aid from a major foreign power. Living among her oppressed people this peasant girl, like so many others her age, conceives a child out of wedlock. Her son is born on the open road, without shelter or home, while she and her husband are traveling. Terrified by a recent wave of murderous violence, she flees with her husband and child, going into exile in the land of her enemies to live for years as an unwelcome alien. After several years surviving as refugees, they hear that the despot has finally been overthrown, killed, and so they decide to return to their homeland. Unfortunately the land is still under foreign occupation, still threatened by continual outbreaks of violence. After a time the woman’s husband dies, leaving her a widow in a world where women have neither power nor property, but must reply upon the men they are related to. Her son, however, provides her with no security. Deciding not to marry he leaves home to wander the land as an itinerant preacher. Soon enough he runs afoul of the local authorities, is expelled from the church, arrested by the police, handed over to the army of occupation, tortured and executed as a felon between two thieves. As a final indignity this widow’s son is buried in a borrowed grave.

Here is the story of a victim, a faceless statistic, a predictable and repeatable tale of woe of the life and death of "the poor" Here is a woman, a widow, an alien, an unwed mother without power or wealth, dignity or joy, here is "the poor".

And yet this woman is the mother of God. This victim, this refugee, this unwed mother and abandoned widow is a person of unimaginable dignity, courage, love, passion, life, heroism, and virtue. Here is a soul which is neither faceless or numbered, but bright and shining with the very radiance of God. It is this woman who cries out in the first chapter of Luke.

"My soul magnifies the Lord!

My spirit rejoices in God my savior...

From this day all generations will call me blessed!!!"

Mary, who is clearly poor, whose life is rich with sorrow and chock-full of the brutality of poverty, is not just a victim, a statistic, a member of an oppressed nation, another unwed mother, another felon’s mother, another widow. She does not ask for our pity, invoke our guilt, or cry for our mercy. Instead, she is a vivid and radiant presence, a prophet, a disciple, a bearer of the Word of God in her body, her spirit and her life. Like Hopkins’ creation, she shines forth with the glory and grandeur of God. Her soul magnifies the Lord and all generations do indeed call her blessed.

Mary has forced us to recognize also that here is a happy, a life-giving, an incredibly rich and lively spirit. Here in the midst of poverty and oppression is a life well lived and passionately vibrant. Not denying the brutalizing force of her poverty. Mary teaches us of the power of God’s gracious love and of the ability to be poor and to be greatly alive.

Now we see that "the poor" only describes a piece of the experience of our sisters and brothers. Being poor does not lower them to a single dimension or strip them of their sanctity, dignity or radiance. They are not merely victima or objects of our pity They are souls which magnify the Lord, and we will come to bask in that radiance as we come to know them, to understand them and to love them. Perhaps poverty is not the worst reality in the world. Perhaps the worst reality is the division of the world into two camps, one poor and one rich.