‘The Poor Will Always Be With Us’ Means What?

The Nobel Prize laureate Muhammod Yanus wrote a book, Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism, in which he places numbers on the face of poverty to help us recognize the size of the situation. The numbers are that 94% of the world’s income goes to 40% of the people. Therefore, 6% of the world income goes to 60% of the people. This means half the world lives on $2 or $1 a day.

Granted poverty is not distributed evenly around the world: specific regions suffer its worst effect. In our part of the world, social progress has had an effect so that only 47 million Americans, or 1/6th of the population, or 16.6%, endure poverty as opposed to the 60% average in the world where local figures become global figures.

As a Catholic, what are we to do? Jesus’ remark about the poor always will be with us is often taken out of context. It was not a remark to resign that whatever we do to eradicate poverty will be futile. He gave us His plan to eradicate poverty in that passage. (Matthew 26: 6-13). The back story is that a woman brought an expensive ointment and poured it over Jesus’ head. A practical disciple thought it should have been sold and the money given to the poor. Jesus instructed those listening with a text and subtext that the woman had used her resource well. She had prepared Him for His burial, but the subtext was that she used what she had to praise God.

If we implement this message into the poverty we encounter in our community, on the street corner, with the unemployed sitting at a computer looking for work, in the children who are void of but developing skills, we see His directive. We are to build and honor skills. We are to pay our children for babysitting, for they used their capabilities well to serve others and in the end a greater Good. We are to appreciate and buy crafts of those struggling to be a part of the supportive commerce system. Afterall, Nike began as a product being sold from the trunk of a car. We help those struggling to use their skills to support themselves and be an integral part of the whole of commerce. It’s the little supportive actions that make a lasting impression. We are the small alabaster jar that holds the precious actions that will flow over God in praise when we help build, honor, pay, buy, use a skill, craft, service, or resource correctly --- be it ours or others.

Carol Ikard
Board Member, Catholic Charities of Central Texas