(…) Not all suffering corresponds to extreme poverty, far from it! Suffering is part of the human condition, it can build people up, help them to grow, be a guarantee of mental, physical, spiritual, and social stability. It can be a person’s protection against arrogance, contempt for the weak, the breakdown of their physical and moral defences, against isolation from others and losing touch with God. It can stimulate and develop all a person’s capacity to do better for themselves.
This certainly does not mean that we should accept or even seek out suffering. I have seen too much misfortune and suffering amongst men and women who are otherwise well-off not to believe that all suffering requires at the same time both awareness and rejection. This applies to the rich as well as to those living in poverty. All the more so, because some trials involve for those afflicted an isolation that brings them closer to the destitute. Those living in poverty may through their destitution attract compassion. provided that their poverty has not rendered them unrecognisable. The wealthy may have to suffer in solitude because their misfortune is not outwardly visible. Moreover, as a politician friend of mine said, ‘When people know we are in trouble they shy away from us. Our world no longer knows how to talk to those who are struck down by misfortune. It has not learned how’
Nevertheless, it remains true that, even in isolation and profound suffering, those who are not living in poverty have ways of protecting themselves in the face of adversity if only they are able to recognise them. If suffering opens their hearts to compassion, they have the means to help those who are suffering more than they are. I don’t think that Jesus condemns this kind of suffering, which is a way to identify with others.
What was intolerable for him and totally contrary to his Father’s will, was not only the misery unjustly inflicted on those living in poverty despised and ridiculed to such an extent that the victims are no longer able to demonstrate their dignity and love for others. What he could not abide was the hopeless suffering inflicted on the poorest families, deprived of all means of making this a source of resilience, spiritual strength and rapprochement between humanity and God.
I think of the unacceptable hardship of underprivileged and unskilled workers who leave school without learning to read and write and were made to feel ashamed of this by society, when really their situation should call forth a fight for justice. It isn’t normal for a society to fail to provide all its members with the means to transcend suffering, to overcome it, by mitigating its effects, or by drawing strength from it. It is not normal for people to suffer the despair and shame of having nothing to contribute, of feeling useless and considered as such. It is truly unacceptable that they and their children should be stigmatised as was done by one civil servant in a government department, ‘That’s how they are, they don’t make any effort. If they were more about them, they would learn at school…’
This constant vilification prevents us from identifying with their profound rejection of humiliation. We do not help them to consolidate this refusal within themselves. This is the source of all the loneliness and oppressive anxiety of Fourth World families. The anguish not only of not knowing what to give their children to eat, but of seeing themselves as accused and despised by those around them for not knowing how to feed, clothe and educate them…
An elderly person confined to bed by a stroke does not in themself suffer an affront to their humanity. Provided they have received a minimum of help, they can be welcoming, have friends, and be a source of well-being and happiness for those around him. They are not poor; at the very least, they have the possibility of not being so. Someone living in extreme poverty is not simply in a worse situation, but in a fundamentally different one.
Human suffering is inevitable, and it can be valuable. Poverty is neither of these. It is always an abuse. Isn’t this what Jesus wanted to teach us and what those living in poverty on our doorstep teach us every day? Poverty is the situation of someone to whom their brothers and sisters have not given the basic means to feel and show themselves to be fully human and, consequently, a child of God. Through his life and passion, Jesus took on this misery that destroys people instead of building them up. It was this that he made the cornerstone of salvation.