A quick thought: whenever I read the lives of the saints (or Christian holy people), one constant that strikes me is their love of the poor.
Not just a humanitarian desire to make life better for the poor, but a positive love of the poor themselves-- as human beings, not objects of charity.
George Bernard Shaw famously wrote: "For my part I hate the poor and look forward eagerly to their extermination." Obviously, he was being provocative and epigrammatic here: he didn't want to exerminate poor people, but to exterminate poverty. (He also said he wanted to exterminate the other classes.)
I think we all tend to be Shavians today, in this regard. We see nothing good in poverty.
This love of the poor and solidarity with the poor seems an aspect of the Christian tradition that is rather sidelined today, even among Christians.
My favourite Catholic writer and titanic polemicist Leon Bloy has a book called, “The Blood of the Poor” and a novel entitled “The Woman who was Poor.” He lived in total poverty all his own life.
ReplyDeleteThat's intersting. All I really know of him is the celebrated saying: "The only tragedy in life is not to have been a saint". If that's him...
DeleteI really should brush up on French Catholic writers, or even French writers in general.