PREFERENCE FOR THE POOR

Real love to Christ must issue in love to all who are Christ's, and real love to Christ's poor must issue in self-denying acts of love toward them. E. Pusey (in the Rule of the Order of the Ascension)

Today we offer a guest posting from Father Sammy Wood, priest-in-charge of St. Mary’’s Times Square. The parish has been engaged in a conversation about its common life. This is the most recent statement from The Angelus.

This is the sixth in an ongoing series of articles unpacking the vision for our common life over the next three years here at Saint Mary’s. By now I hope we’re all familiar with this statement: 

Saint Mary’s is a vibrant Anglo-Catholic witness in the heart of New York City. With our identity in Christ and a preference for the poor, we are an inclusive, diverse community called to love God and each other for the life of the world.

Today we have an opportunity to look more closely at our “preference for the poor.”

In February, the New York Times said the number of New Yorkers living below the poverty line is nearly twice the national average. Some 23% of residents in our city cannot afford basic necessities like food and housing—that’s nearly 2 million people, including one in four children. The Bible, both old and new testaments, makes this our very own concern. “Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.’” (Deut. 15.11) And “when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind [a]nd you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous” (Luke 14.12-14). And church tradition has long recognized the obligation for Christians to practice corporal acts of mercy, including feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, welcoming strangers, clothing the naked, caring for the sick, visiting prisoners, and burying the dead.

As Christians, and specifically as Anglo-Catholics, we are committed to the poor. Our rich Anglo-Catholic history includes beloved “slum priests” who felt how their high church liturgy went hand-in-hand with labor and sacrifice for Christ’s poor. Indeed, it was “the labor and sacrifice of the slum priests that gave real moral heft to the Oxford Movement and saved it from the insularity of which it has stood accused ever since.” No less a guiding light of the movement than Father E. B. Pusey, said “There is no deeper source of blessing, nor more frequent means of enlarged grace to the soul, than love for Christ’s sake, to His little ones and His poor.” Our liturgy actually trains us to love God for himself and our neighbor for God, beseeching our Heavenly Father “so to assist us with thy grace, that we may . . . do all such good works as thou hast prepared for us to walk in.” (Rite I, Postcommunion Prayer.) And Saint Mary’s has always placed service to the poor chief among our concerns. Father Taber wrote in a 1957 letter to the parish that when God’s “love begets our love . . . then shall we give to our fellow men, and especially to the poor, gift after gift for in so doing we shall actually be returning love to Christ.”

In adopting our current vision statement, the Board of Trustees pored over each phrase, choosing the language for each with care. The idea of a “preferential option” for the poor is not a new one, and it is not the property of Anglicans alone. It was first used in a letter from the Superior General of the Jesuits to his order in 1968, and it has become ubiquitous in catholic social teaching. Bishops in Latin America seized on the phrase, giving rise to the Liberation Theology movement, which soon spilled over the boundaries of that movement and spread to the broader church. During his papacy, Pope John Paul II expanded the option to include spiritual as well as material poverty, and Pope Benedict XVI (a sometime critic of liberation theology) extended it to all the marginalized — children, widows, the oppressed, people with disabilities. Pope Francis even uses the phrase to argue for climate justice, noting that the burden of ecological degradation falls most heavily on the world’s poor, urging the church, in his 2015 encyclical Laudato Si, to “hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.”

Saint Mary’s has been concerned with the lives of the poor among us since our formation as a parish church, and that concern continues today. From our longstanding program providing clothing and necessities to our Neighbors in Need to our Open Doors policy; from our recent shift from paper products to ceramic coffee mugs and plates, to the funds the Board budgets for your clergy to use at their discretion to improve the lives of those who come to us in need; our preference for the poor is obvious, and we hope even to deepen it in the years to come.

One last point. We serve the poor for all the aforementioned reasons, to be sure. But we learn something from them in this life, as well. Most of us at Saint Mary’s are in pretty good shape, materially. But as my friend Pastor Scott Souls writes:

The gospels and real life help us see that material wealth cannot save us and will not solve all of life’s problems. This is why the famous actor, Jim Carrey, said he wishes everyone could be rich and famous and have everything they ever wanted so they can know it’s not the answer. Jesus, who left the riches of glory and became poor by choice, helps us see that the poor are not merely recipients of the world’s charity. Rather, the poor have something unique to offer to the world. The poor demonstrate what it looks like for humans to live from a place of need. For it is only from a place of need that we too can experience a kind of freedom that is “the opposite of heavy.”

At our baptisms, we all vow to “strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being.” Faithfulness to this vow prevents us ever being indifferent to the plight of the poor, whether right next door in midtown or anywhere across the globe. As Bishop of Zanzibar Frank Weston famously said in his concluding address to the Anglo-Catholic Congress of 1923: “You cannot claim to worship Jesus in the Tabernacle, if you do not pity Jesus in the slum.” At Saint Mary’s, let us do both with abandon.

Thanks for reading these monthly pieces, and I continue to be interested to hear your thoughts. How are we faring in this aspect of our mission, and what are your ideas for how we can more and more side with the poor? Let me know if I can buy you a coffee and hear your own hopes and dreams about the future of Saint Mary’s and this vision for our common life. — SW

The photo: Father Sammy Wood is censing the Gospel Book prior to chanting the appointed lesson. Mr. Winston Deane, who served as the crucifer, is holding the book. Mr. Andrew Raines and Ms. Pat Ahearn were the acolytes. Mrs. Grace Mudd served as the thurifer and Ms. MaryJane Boland was the MC. Mr. Brendon Hunter and Ms. Dorothy Rowan, seen in choir, were torch bearers. Photo: Katherine Hoyt

Earlier statements By Sammy Wood on the vision are found here.