Believe in the poor!
-Christian promotion and militancy
In memory of Teresa Cáceres, who always believed in the promotion of
the impoverished.
Editorial
What does it mean to be poor? In the great Christian tradition, the poor are those who have been unjustly deprived of the basic conditions for a dignified life; it also refers to those who have consciously and freely given up their possessions in imitation of Christ. Both are considered blessed because they are the legitimate heirs of the Kingdom of God. Those who accumulate wealth are pitied, in Christian logic, for being wretched people who place their hope in material security. In that same tradition, misery, exclusion, and injustice are rejected as fruits of sin.
Christianity is, therefore, a religion that exalts the poor and combats the causes of misery. It does so through the contemplation of the Incarnate Word—through the encounter with Love—not for ideological reasons, nor even for exclusively moral or social reasons. The reason for the Christian centrality of poverty is that it brings together three fundamental facts: the most painful manifestation of sin in the world; the deepest commotion of God’s merciful heart; and, thirdly, the voluntary response of those who want to live in the manner of Christ. The authenticity of our Christianity is at stake in our relationship with poverty, in much the same way as it is with the liturgy, apostolic teaching, and community life.
Thanks to the contributions of the Christian-based, non-ideological Labor Movement, the apostolate of St. Charles de Foucauld, Cardijn, and Rovirosa, and Magisterium of the Church, we have now regained the awareness that charitable love for the poor is subsidiary and, therefore, limited and transitory. Charity may be necessary in particularly serious and extraordinary situations, but making it habitual is a way of manipulating, controlling, and dividing the impoverished, which is the goal of the network of NGOs and philanthropic entities dependent on the UN ( United Nations Organization), multinational corporations, and most governments.
The Labor Movement and the other groups and believers mentioned above remind us that, according to Christ, the only true and legitimate way to love the poor regularly is through integral promotion or evangelization, which involves recognizing them as protagonists of their own liberation rather than as recipients of our supposed charity. It means not hindering—as welfare does—their access to Christian activism or to the forms of solidarity that are their own; nor to the organizations, methods, and means that characterize them and allow them to be autonomous; to decide in solidarity for themselves and to be strong enough to defeat the Goliath that tramples them.
The love of promoting the poor involves, in the words of the disciples of St. Charles de Foucauld, four things: knowing, understanding, and living the life of the poor and, fourthly, sharing their struggles for liberation, not directing them.
In this issue of the magazine, we will delve deeper into what the love of promotion entails through a contemporary testimony that has embodied it: Tere Cáceres, a consecrated virgin, who made her life a continuous descent in imitation of her Spouse, for whom she sought to take the four steps we have just described, and who left us an invaluable testimony of promotion of the impoverished, whom she loved deeply without creating dependencies, seeking to make them free for Christ, the Church, and Solidarity.
