October 21, 2014
Tuesday
29th Week
in Ordinary Time
1st Reading: Eph 2:12-22
Gospel: Luke 12:35-38
Jesus said to his disciples, “Be ready, dressed for service, and keep your lamps lit, like people waiting for their master to return from the wedding. As soon as he comes and knocks, they will open to him.
Happy are those servants whom the master finds wide-awake when he comes. Truly, I tell you, he will put on an apron and have them sit at table and he will wait on them. Happy are those servants if he finds them awake when he comes at midnight or daybreak!”
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the Assimilated Life Experience)
Many solutions have been proposed to address the problem of poverty. A popular one is Todaro and Smith’s theory that a sustained elevation of an entire society and social system leads to better or “more humane life”. To achieve this good life Todaro and Smith (Economic development, 2003) propose the satisfaction of the triple human needs for sustenance, self-esteem and freedom from slavery.
Human beings attain the good life if systems promote their self worth.
What gives citizens a sense of self-worth may vary from culture to culture, but all agree that self esteem is not available in a society that uses people as mere tools to feed its systems. Governments determined to use the citizens like cogs in a wheel encourage citizens to believe that poverty is a destiny of some much as prosperity is the privilege of a few. They fool poor people into believing that they are born poor and destined to die poor.
A misunderstanding of the biblical verse “happy are the poor” tends to encourage passive submission to poverty and to systems that fatten a few at the expense of the least. It was also this Bible verse that led one communist leader to believe that religion is the opium of the people. As opium renders people numb to physical pain, so religion makes poor people submissive to their plight. But the Gospel verse “happy are the poor” never intends to encourage material poverty. What it does encourage is spiritual poverty that makes one humble and loving towards the less fortunate. God does not rejoice over the material misery of his own people if such hinders them from living their lives to the full.
The theory of Todaro and Smith assures the attainment of the good life when development sets people free instead of reducing them to mere parts of the system like cogs in a wheel. It is one good theory to support. But it is not doable until people are dressed to serve and take responsibility over the plight of others.—Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., DM. Email: [email protected]. Website: www.frdan.org.
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