I am blessed to have spent almost fourteen years ministering where only poor people have lived, in an area on the periphery of Salvador, Brazil. I had previously worked in other countries, in parishes which had a mixed population of poor and middle-class people. The blessing was to work in an area that had only poor people and I often reflect on this blessing.
The poor live from day to day. They have a unique capacity for celebrating the present moment, precisely, because the future is always uncertain. In their world the individual is so often helpless, the only strength they have is in their numbers. Solidarity is bred within them from infancy: you share with others because they have shared with you. They know that there will be no schools, no electricity, no running water, no sewage systems, no roads, no public transport, unless they work together to demand that they be built.
Since all are poor where I have ministerd, any distinction among them of health, colour, religion is less important than their poverty, hence the community is open to all.
In such a setting, the Church is often the only institution that is truly interested in the people. It can lend its weight and its support to affirm and build up the local leaders, to denounce the injustices that they suffer, and to organise for change. Priests, Sisters and lay missionaries are often the only ones willing to live with the poor, to mourn their defeats and to celebrate their rare victories. Our understanding of the Church in this setting helps, in turn, to shape our understanding of the Eucharist.
To celebrate the Eucharist in such a community of solidarity and openness is a special grace. Jesus’ dramatic gesture of sharing and self-giving: This is my body given for you, This is my blood poured out for you, Do this in memory of me, finds a special resonance in such a context. We celebrate His act of total self-sacrifice. It is an invitation to share all that we have and are with others. It is a call to radical living, focused on others and on their needs. No wonder it ends with an invitation to mission, Go in peace to love and serve the Lord, (cf. “This is a Hard Saying...” by Brendan Lovett, pp 8-9 of the May 2012 issue, on the Eucharist as a new way of realizing our humanity.)
I like to think that Dublin’s Eucharistic Congress has a missionary patron, St Columban (or Columbanus) because Eucharist always leads to mission. It implies a reaching out in solidarity, an openness to all but especially to those who are different from us - the strangers, the marginalised, the lonely, those who for whatever reason are being considered and treated as being ‘beyond the pale’.
When the congregation contains some poor people, but the majority are middle-class and some few who might be considered "well-off", it is too easy to lose our sense of a sharing, open community. We are in danger of slipping into a more individual focus. Is a true worship of God really present - yes; but with little reference to the self-giving sharing, which is the essence of the Eucharist.
Fr Cyril Lovett SSC is the editor of The Far East magazine in Ireland and Britain.
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