Deus Caritas Est in the streetcorner beggars.

I’ve had a bit of an epiphany.  It’s time to try a new experiment:  one where I look people in the eye, and exchange a sincere word with them, if I can.   

Let me explain:  I finally got around to reading Deus Caritas Est.   I kept promising myself I was going to read it, and I kept opening up browser windows at www.vatican.va and then wandering away from them to get a cup of coffee or fold laundry and then never coming back.  Finally I printed a copy, stapled it together and put it on my bedside table; I finished it in one day.   What an immediately accessible, immediately applicable piece of writing.   

I am used to JPII’s theology, which I’ve related to very cerebrally.  I enjoy thinking about it, making connections in my head, and being pleased when it all fits together well.   I was already married and "with the program" by the time I really started reading JPII’s work, so even his extensive writings on marital sexuality — though they’re very relevant — have taught me far more about how to think, what kind of attitude to have, than about how to modify my behavior.   Maybe that would be different if I’d discovered it a few years earlier! 

Deus Caritas Est also contained many gems to meditate on.  But besides that, I immediately saw in it a call for me to change the way I react to certain situations.  The most prominent one is the way I react to the sight of a street beggar.

Living in the central city as I do, I frequentlyencounter people who are begging for money.  When the weather is not too cold, I see several beggars each day.  The ones that I see are usually standing at intersections, near freeway ramps, holding a cardboard sign with a predictable message:  "Homeless veteran, anything helps, God bless."   They are usually middle-aged, and maybe there are twice as many men as women.  I frequently see the same people in the same places.  I have heard that they stake out claims to the most lucrative intersections, and even charge each other fees to use the best spots.  I have heard that they stash the signs in the nearby foliage for the next person to use.  I do not know if these rumors are true.   

I do not know anything about the people who stand there asking for money.  I do not know if they are ill or healthy.  I do not know if they are looking for work, unable to work, or if they really do have a job.   I do not know if the signs speak the truth: if that woman is really homeless, or if that man is really a veteran, or — and this is crucial — if "anything helps."  Does anything help?

You know what goes through your mind — if I give him money, will he just use it for drugs?  If I give her money, will she turn most of it over to some exploiter?  An I just perpetuating "the system?"  I’ve handed over money and wondered whether I did something wrong.  I’ve kept granola bars in my car and handed those out, thinking to myself that at least it won’t hurt (but still had a nagging wondering if that person really deserved a granola bar.  Ouch.)   And lots of times I’ve changed lanes so as not to be obligated to open the window.   Lots of times, when I’ve known I wasn’t going to give, I’ve looked away, I’ve pretended not to see.  And I’ve wished there was a simple answer.

Deus Caritas Est has answered.  Part II of the document is all about the service of charity, particularly as it interweaves with the question of social justice.  Charity and justice are not the same.  Are they in conflict?    Here are some quotes.

…[A]n objection has been raised to the Church’s charitable activity…: the poor, it is claimed, do not need charity but justice. Works of charity—almsgiving—are in effect a way for the rich to shirk their obligation to work for justice and a means of soothing their consciences, while preserving their own status and robbing the poor of their rights. Instead of contributing through individual works of charity to maintaining the status quo, we need to build a just social order in which all receive their share of the world’s goods and no longer have to depend on charity. There is admittedly some truth to this argument, but also much that is mistaken. It is true that the pursuit of justice must be a fundamental norm of the State and that the aim of a just social order is to guarantee to each person, according to the principle of subsidiarity, his share of the community’s goods. …

[T]wo fundamental situations need to be considered:

a) The just ordering of society and the State is a central responsibility of politics… The Church’s social teaching argues on the basis of reason and natural law…. It recognizes that it is not the Church’s responsibility to make this teaching prevail in political life. Rather, the Church wishes to help form consciences in political life …

b) Love—caritas—will always prove necessary, even in the most just society. There is no ordering of the State so just that it can eliminate the need for a service of love…. There will always be suffering which cries out for consolation and help. There will always be loneliness. There will always be situations of material need where help in the form of concrete love of neighbour is indispensable.

…The Church can never be exempted from practising charity as an organized activity of believers, and on the other hand, there will never be a situation where the charity of each individual Christian is unnecessary, because in addition to justice man needs, and will always need, love.

All that is to say, that individual acts of charity are good.   And that the Church’s social mission must always be centered in charitable work, not "justice" work, that it is the Church’s job to spur us laypeople on on to do the right thing so that we can build just social structures and respond with charity to individuals in need.

But what is charity, and what exactly should I offer that unknown beggar at the intersection?   Is the question whether handouts will solve the problem of homelessness?  Ought I to write "Jesus loves you" on the granola wrappers?  Benedict spends most of the rest of the encyclical writing about charitable organizations, not individuals.  He begins by writing what charity is not:  it is not a means of improving "the world," and it is not a means of proselytism.

It is not a means of changing the world ideologically, and it is not at the service of worldly stratagems, but it is a way of making present here and now the love which man always needs. … Part of Marxist strategy is the theory of impoverishment: in a situation of unjust power, it is claimed, anyone who engages in charitable initiatives is actually serving that unjust system, making it appear at least to some extent tolerable. …. Seen in this way, charity is rejected and attacked as a means of preserving the status quo. What we have here, though, is really an inhuman philosophy. People of the present are sacrificed to the moloch of the future…. One does not make the world more human by refusing to act humanely here and now….

Charity, furthermore, cannot be used as a means of engaging in what is nowadays considered proselytism. Love is free; it is not practised as a way of achieving other ends.   But this does not mean that charitable activity must somehow leave God and Christ aside…. Often the deepest cause of suffering is the very absence of God. Those who practise charity in the Church’s name will never seek to impose the Church’s faith upon others. They realize that a pure and generous love is the best witness to the God in whom we believe and by whom we are driven to love. A Christian knows when it is time to speak of God and when it is better to say nothing and to let love alone speak.

Sprinkled throughout the encyclical is this practical advice:

1.  Before trying to give charity to others, draw it from Christ himself.  (It’s living water we want to give, after all):

[Man] cannot always give, he must also receive. Anyone who wishes to give love must also receive love as a gift. Certainly, as the Lord tells us, one can become a source from which rivers of living water flow (cf. Jn 7:37-38). Yet to become such a source, one must constantly drink anew from the original source, which is Jesus Christ, from whose pierced heart flows the love of God (cf. Jn 19:34).

2.  The parable of the Good Samaritan reminds all Christians that "Anyone who needs me, and whom I can help, is my neighbour":

The concept of “neighbour” is now universalized, yet it remains concrete. Despite being extended to all mankind, it is not reduced to a generic, abstract and undemanding expression of love, but calls for my own practical commitment here and now.

3.  Even if you don’t have any "feelings" for the stranger in need (you are not attached to the stranger!), you can encourage in yourself charitable feelings, a desire to help,  by contemplating that we are all the beloved of Jesus Christ — attached through him:

Love of neighbour … consists in the very fact that, in God and with God, I love even the person whom I do not like or even know. This can only take place on the basis of an intimate encounter with God, an encounter which has become a communion of will, even affecting my feelings. Then I learn to look on this other person not simply with my eyes and my feelings, but from the perspective of Jesus Christ. His friend is my friend.

4.  We must not avoid an encounter with a person in need because of fear of what he may demand or some other reason.  In all situations we can and must give what that is needed most:

Going beyond exterior appearances, I perceive in others an interior desire for a sign of love, of concern. This I can offer them not only through the organizations intended for such purposes, accepting it perhaps as a political necessity. Seeing with the eyes of Christ, I can give to others much more than their outward necessities; I can give them the look of love which they crave.

(So much for going out of my way to avoid looking the beggar in the eye, eh?)

5.  Giving just to alleviate our consciences is no charity.  Give of yourself, not just from your things.  The anonymous passing out of dollars, or granola bars, won’t do. 

My deep personal sharing in the needs and sufferings of others becomes a sharing of my very self with them: if my gift is not to prove a source of humiliation, I must give to others not only something that is my own, but my very self; I must be personally present in my gift.

6.  And yet, don’t fear giving because you’re not humble enough; the humility that is necessary for your efforts to bear fruit will be given to you as a result of your attempts to give.

This proper way of serving others also leads to humility. The one who serves does not consider himself superior to the one served, however miserable his situation at the moment may be. Christ took the lowest place in the world—the Cross—and by this radical humility he redeemed us and constantly comes to our aid. Those who are in a position to help others will realize that in doing so they themselves receive help; being able to help others is no merit or achievement of their own. This duty is a grace.

7.  Pray regularly, and pray for the people whose needs you see:

Prayer, as a means of drawing ever new strength from Christ, is concretely and urgently needed. People who pray are not wasting their time, even though the situation appears desperate and seems to call for action alone. Piety does not undermine the struggle against the poverty of our neighbours, however extreme. In the example of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta we have a clear illustration of the fact that time devoted to God in prayer not only does not detract from effective and loving service to our neighbour but is in fact the inexhaustible source of that service. In her letter for Lent 1996, Blessed Teresa wrote to her lay co-workers: “We need this deep connection with God in our daily life. How can we obtain it? By prayer”.

8.  Do not be discouraged by the smallness of your first moves towards charity.  (I know I’ve often thought that my charity was no good because of the grudging feelings that I often harbor.)  Whatever your inadequacies, you are qualified to practice charity by the very fact of your humanness:

Hope is practised through the virtue of patience, which continues to do good even in the face of apparent failure, and through the virtue of humility, which accepts God’s mystery and trusts him even at times of darkness. Faith tells us that God has given his Son for our sakes and gives us the victorious certainty that it is really true: God is love!…Love is possible, and we are able to practise it because we are created in the image of God.

So what have I learned?  I think perhaps I should worry less about the content of the "handout" and more about the content of the human connection that I could make with the strangers holding the cardboard signs.   What keeps me from looking that man in the eye and giving him a warm, generous smile?  Guilt that I’m not giving him some cash?  That’s a pitiful excuse.  What keeps me from rolling down the window and saying sincerely, "I hope you enjoy the beautiful weather we’re having?"  It’s sure not safety, because I have rolled down the window to hand out a snack.   

Like I said at the beginning, it’s time to try a new experiment.  I think that the granola bars are (at this time) getting in the way of my making a real human connection, so I’m gonna put them away (for a while) and see what happens if the only thing I give to a person on the corner is "of myself. " 

There are many other themes in Deus Caritas Est that catch my eye and draw me to contemplate more:  the starting point of the contemplation of charity is the pierced side of Christ; to understand Jesus’s parables, we must first understand that "love can be commanded because it has first been given;"  in divine love, as is not usual in imperfect human love, eros and agape are in perfect union.  But I’ve never before felt so stirred by a bit of theology into action, and I’m going to make that move the next time I have a chance.