Poverty, in the eyes of the Christian

Conferences of the Rev. Père Lacordaire, p. 522-533

I do not deny that the inconveniences of proprietorship are great: the abuses which heathen society had made of it called for more than a reform, they called for a total revolution. The rich being degraded, had degraded the poor, and nothing in common existed between those two decayed but living members of humanity. The rich had no longer any idea they owed something to the poor. They had deprived the poor of all right, all dignity, all respect for themselves; of every hope, every remembrance of common origin, and of fraternity. No one thought of the instruction of the poor, none of their infirmities, or of their death. They lived between the cruelty of their masters, the indifference of all, and their own scorn of themselves. This is where Jesus Christ found them: let us see what he has made of them.

There is a proprietorship which is inseparable from man, a proprietorship which he cannot alienate from himself without ceasing to be a man, and of which society should never accept the alienation: this is the proprietorship of labour. Yes, … it is possible that you may not attain to the possession of land: the soil is limited; it has been inhabited for centuries; you arrive late, and it will perhaps cost you sixty years of the most laborious life to conquer but a small portion of it. This is true. But on the other hand, and as a counterpoise, the proprietorship of labour will always remain to you; you will never be disinherited in this regard, and the possessor of land cannot even, without your help, obtain from the soil which belongs to him the obedience of fertility. Your labour, if it be not the sceptre of the world, is at least the half of it, and by that equitable distribution, riches will depend upon poverty as much as poverty upon riches. The passage from the one to the other will be frequent; the condition of both will be to help each other mutually, and to engender reciprocal relations. Such is the present order; but was it the same before the appearance of the Gospel? You know that it was not… you know that slavery was the general condition of the poor; that is to say, that, deprived of the domain of the land, they were also deprived of all right over their own labour. The rich had said to the poor: “I am master of the soil; I must take care of thy labour, without which the soil will produce me nothing. The soil and labour are but one. I will not labour, because it fatigues me; and I will not treat with [deal with, contract with] thee, because that would be to recognise thee as my equal, and to cede to thee a part of my property in exchange for thy toil. I will not stand in need of thee; I will not admit that a man is necessary to me to make shoes for my feet, and to cover my nakedness; thou shalt then belong to me, thou shalt be mine as well as the land; and as long as it suits me, I shall take care that thou dost not die of hunger.”

Probably, … this conversation was not held; but the thing has happened, and is become a general fact. Man perished with the proprietorship of his labour. He descended to the rank of a domestic animal, who guards the house, tills the ground, and to whom they throw his food two or three times a day. No one in ancient times found this bad. Was it, then, a small thing to have established in the world this great principle: man is never without property; man, without property, does not exist; property and personality are all one? Is not this making a revolution in the principle of property, and a revolution of which no legislation had conceived the idea? Well! Jesus Christ has accomplished it; he has rendered back to man for ever the proprietorship of his labour; he has made the poor necessary to the rich, by sharing liberty and sources of life with him. No land has ever flourished more than under the hand of the poor and the rich united by a treaty, stipulating by their alliance for the fruitfulness of nature. All of you who hear me, are children of that joyful union; you owe to it all that you are, all, without exception. Without that unlooked-for change in the administration of property, the greater number of us would be slaves, myself as well as you; —I should not speak to you from this pulpit; you would not hear the language of right and duty, and if, by chance, it might reach you or me, we should conceal it as a crime; we should go into caverns underground, to converse in subdued tones about the truths which we discuss here in the face of day and by the light of God.

Ungrateful men, who renounce Jesus Christ, and who think you design a greater work than his in attacking property, even that of labour, it is most fortunate for you that the power of the Gospel prevails over your own. Every hour of your dignity, and of your liberty, is an hour which is preserved to you in spite of yourselves, and which you owe to the power of Jesus Christ. If some day his cross were to sink upon the horizon, like a vanished star, the same causes which formerly produced slavery, would infallibly produce it again; the domain of the land, and the domain of labour, would, by an invincible attraction, fall back again into the same hands; and poverty, yielding to riches, would present to the astonished world the spectacle of a state of degradation, from which it has emerged only by a miracle perpetually existing before our eyes.

That miracle weighs heavily upon you, I know it; you even ingeniously ask, in what page of the Gospel slavery has been positively reproved and abolished. Great God! in no one page, but in every one of them. Jesus Christ said not a word which was not a condemnation of slavery, and which did not burst a link of the chains of mankind. When he called himself the Son of Man, he emancipated man; when he said, “Love thy neighbour as thyself,” he emancipated man; when he chose fishermen for his apostles, he emancipated man; when he died for all without distinction, he emancipated man. … Saint Paul, being initiated into the patient secrets of the divine action, thus wrote to the Romans: “Let every man abide in the same calling in which he was called. Art thou called, being a bondman? care not for it: but if thou mayest be made free, use it rather.”(1) Those very words were as solemn an act of deliverance as these: “I, Paul the aged, and now also a prisoner of Jesus Christ, I beseech thee for my son Onesimus, whom I have begotten in my chains and whom I have sent back to thee longer as a slave, but instead of a slave, a most dear brother.”(2) The evangelical restitution of man is thus accomplished; it is thus preserved and propagated, by an insensible infusion of justice and charity, which enters into the soul and transforms it without violence, and in a manner which causes that the hour of the revolution is never known. The world, before Jesus Christ, never knew that the proprietorship of labour was essential to man; the world formed by Jesus Christ has known and practised it; this is all. But the proprietorship of labour is not of itself sufficient for the poor. The infant poor, the sick poor, the aged poor, possess no labour, and but too often even the able poor cannot find work enough. It was necessary, then, for Jesus Christ to create another property than that of labour. Where was he to find this? Evidently it could only be found in the land; but the land belonged to the rich; that right cannot be touched without reducing the whole human race to a state of servitude. What resource was there? Jesus Christ has discovered one… he has taught us that property is not egotistical in its essence, but that it may be so by the use which is made of it, and that it is only necessary to regulate and to limit that use, in order to assure to the poor their share in the common patrimony. The Gospel has established this new principle, which was yet more unknown than the inalienability of labour: no one has a right to the fruits of his own domain, other than according to the measure of his legitimate wants. God, in effect, has given the earth to man only because of his wants, and in order to provide for them. Every other use is a selfish and parricidal use, —a use of sensuality, avarice, and pride, vices reprobated by God, and which doubtless he has not desired to strengthen and consecrate in instituting the rights of property. It is true that wants vary according to the social position of man, a position infinitely variable, and of which the Gospel has taken notice, in not mathematically regulating the point at which the proper use ends, and where the abuse begins. Man would have done this; God did not consider himself a sufficiently good mathematician for it, or rather, in this as in all the rest, he has respected our liberty. But the evangelic law in this regard is not the less clear and constant; wherever the legitimate want expires, there also expires the legitimate use of property. That which remains is the patrimony of the poor, in justice as in charity; the rich are but depositaries and administrators of it. If selfish calculations deceive them as to their debt towards the poor, if they escape from it by the enjoyment of luxury increasing with their fortune, or by avarice, in growing constantly more unquiet about the future in proportion as they have less occasion for it, woe to them! It is not written in vain in the Gospel: “Woe to you that are rich.”(3) God will require an account from them at the day of judgment; the tears of the poor will be shown to them; they will see them in the brightness of vengeance, because they would not see them in the light of justice and charity. If they were the legitimate proprietors of their fortune, they will also be the legitimate proprietors of their damnation. I do not halt… before those menaces which are so terrible and so often repeated in the Gospel against the unjust withholders of the territorial property of the poor; for this is but the smallest guarantee of their right. It is not fear which has founded upon earth the second property of the poor, but the unction of Jesus Christ penetrating into the heart of the rich, and blooming there into sacred wheat. From thence come those assiduous attentions of which the ancient world had no idea, those pre-occupations of opulence in favour of misery; those foundations of hospitals and asylums, of almshouses, under every form and under every name; those ears open to catch every lamentation which renders a new sound, and which calls forth an invention of charity; those personal visits to garrets and miserable pallets; those kind words which flow from a fountain of love which is never dried up; that communion of riches and poverty which, from morn to eve, from the age which ends to the age which commences, mingles all ranks, all rights, all duties, all ideas; the theatre with the Church, the cabin with the mansion, birth with death, engendering charity even in crime, and drawing forth even from prostitution its tear and its alms. I admit that a great part of this spectacle is hidden; every eye has not received the gift of perceiving it, and even the eye of God alone knows it all. It is, then, easy, under this head, at least to a certain degree, to accuse the hardness of the rich, and the powerlessness of Jesus Christ. It is for us, Christians, priests of Jesus Christ, who possess the secret of so many good works, to bear witness to that which we see, without ever ceasing to excite the hand which grows weary, or the heart which forgets its duty. Are there not here among the young men who hear me, some representatives of that legion of Saint Vincent of Paul, which covers France, and which now numbers brethren in its name and spirit, even in Constantinople and Mexico? Who is there among you who does not see the poor face to face, who does not know how to listen to them, and speak to them? Which of you has not warmed his faith by the tattered garments of misery? Who, ascending in the evening those miserable stairs, and knocking at the door of grief and pain, has not sometimes heard Jesus Christ reply to him from within by a vanquished temptation, and say to him: Well done? Ah! physical and moral misery are doubtless on the increase in the world: but is it the fault of Jesus Christ, or of those who reject him? Has the property of unbelief the right to accuse the property of Christianity of weakness? This, lessened by the apostasy of a portion of the evangelic society, does what it can; and the other portion does not even leave to it the free action of charity. It is not then to be numbered amongst present evils; it will not be amongst the evils to come. May the others heal the wounds which they open! Jesus Christ has rendered back to the poor the proprietorship of their labour, and he has created for them, in the superfluity of the rich, a second property: but was it enough? You, Christians, who have the sentiment of God, you will say – No. Whilst I have been speaking, you have secretly compared the condition of the rich with that of the poor, and you have said, that after all, the difference was great, and that some other thing was yet wanting to the work of Christ. You are right. Man has not only need of bread, he wants dignity. He is, by his very nature, a dignity. Who is there among us who does not feel this strongly; and who does not aspire to a state of greatness, which is capable of satisfying the instinct which he has of it? We do not deceive ourselves on this point; we are children of a royal race; we descend from a place where domination is of right, and it is just that we should feel moving within us the remains of our first majesty. Alas! in exile, the prince who has lost a throne, never loses the recollection of it; men have remarked a furrow on the brow of all who have been dethroned, a wound of grief which is incurable. Well! we are of the number of those exiles of exalted race: to the letter, and in all the rigour of the expression, we are dethroned kings, children of God, destined some day to sit down on the right hand of our Father, and to reign with Him. This being the case, has the poor man the same measure of glory and of power which comes to us? And can he do without it if he has it not? Can he live without dignity? No, a thousand times— No. I do not admit existence without royalty. Now, where is the royalty of the poor? Where is the royalty of that man who performs the most lowly offices for his daily bread? Where is it? Where is his crown? Who will dress it anew and render it back to him? Who…? Jesus Christ; the Gospel: be assured that they have provided for it. Behold Jesus Christ; Man restored— Man renewed in glory to render it back to us: he comes! Humanity which looks for him is not one, it is divided into two camps on the left, the rich; on the right, the poor: a space between. Jesus Christ descends; behold him! Which way will he go? He will pass over to the side of the poor, with his royalty and his divinity. “He is poor,”(4) cried the Prophet, on seeing him coming from afar; and, declaring his own mission: “The Lord,” said he, “hath sent me to preach the Gospel to the poor.”(5) St. John, the precursor, causes him to be questioned by his disciples: “Art thou,” they asked him, “he that art to come, or do we look for another?” Christ answered: “Go and relate to John what you have heard and seen. The blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead rise again.”(6) Is this all? No; listen attentively! “The poor have the Gospel preached to them!” This is the supreme sign; more than giving sight to the blind, more than making the lame to walk, more than cleansing the lepers, more than making the deaf hear, more than raising the dead to life. “The poor have the Gospel preached to them!” That is to say, knowledge, light, dignity are restored to that portion of mankind which had entirely lost it. Jesus Christ did not grow weary of uniting himself with them; and, sweeping splendour and riches aside whenever he met them on his way, he exclaimed, with divine tenderness: “I give thanks to thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to the little ones.”(7) In fine [ultimately], he established between the poor and himself a bond of union, which will eternally shelter them, and insure to them the respect of all the ages to come: “Whatever you did to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it unto me.”(8)

You understand now, … the strange charm which is attached to poverty in the eyes of the Christian. If, not being contented with helping the poor and loving them, the Christian aspires to be poor himself; if he sells his patrimony in order to distribute it to his suffering brethren; if St. Francis of Assisi renounces his paternal heritage to wander about in the world with a sack and a cord; if Carloman washes the vessels of Mount Cassin; if so many kings, queens, princes, princesses, leave all to embrace voluntary poverty, you know the cause, —Jesus Christ came down from the highest heaven, made himself poor; he made of poverty and love a mixture which inebriates man, and to which all generations come and drink in their turn. The poor is Jesus Christ himself, ―Jesus Christ, who has loved so much! How shall I pass by the poor without a sensation of respect and love? O potent philosophers! I see clearly your objection: you will say to me: But all that is purely metaphysical; there is not a degree there which has a shadow of reality. It is true, there are neither legislative decrees there, nor heavy artillery to cause them to be respected, nor even common sense, if you will have it so; there is in this only a revolution of love, —a revolution which is accomplished with nothing. This is precisely that which strikes me most forcibly. O academicians! men of talent, legislators, princes, prophets, listen to me, if you can. Rich humanity trampled poor humanity underfoot; I belonged then to poor humanity, and I do so now. In pity, then, cause rich humanity to respect poor humanity; cause the rich to love the poor; cause them to think of the poor; create Sisters of Charity to dress my wounds; Brothers of the Schools to instruct me; Brethren of Mercy to redeem me from slavery; —do this, and we will acquit you of all the rest. Jesus Christ has done this, and I love him because he has done this; he has done this with nothing, and this is why I believe him to be God. Every one has his own peculiar ideas. Jesus Christ had a third with regard to the poor; he feared lest they should think themselves unfortunate because of their election to poverty; and he pronounced that adorable saying, which is at the head of all his Gospel: “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”(9) You, perhaps, think that this means: Blessed are those who are despised upon earth, because they will be honoured in heaven; blessed are those who suffer upon earth, because they will rejoice in heaven; blessed are they who are as nothing here below, because they will be all in heaven! It is true, this is in part the sense of that ineffable saying, but it is not its whole meaning. It says also: Blessed are the poor in spirit, because the kingdom of heaven is theirs from here below; because the unction of blessedness will descend into their soul, will enlarge it, will elevate it above the senses, and fill it even in the midst of bereavement! Jesus Christ by this reveals to us a truth, which is not only of the supernatural order, but which belongs also to the moral order, and even to the purely economical order: that happiness is a thing of the soul and not of the body; that the source of it is in devotedness and not in enjoyment, in love and not in sensuality. Now, devotedness belongs to the poor by birthright; and love, too often refused to the rich, dwells willingly in the simple heart of the artisan, who has never been served nor adored, who has not absorbed all his being in pride, and who, knowing how to give up himself, knows what it is to love and to be loved. The Gospel, in turning man from the earth, and in bearing him back towards the things from within, responded then to a disposition of nature itself. It infused into the poor, with the joys of holiness, the lesser but still desirable joys of the human order. It made happy communities, a rare spectacle in our day, but one which, thanks to God, has not yet disappeared. Have you never, on a Sunday, met the population of a village of Brittany on their way to church, the old man proceeding with a cheerful step, the young husband having his bride upon his arm, youths and little children bearing to God their vigorous and artless health; —all outwardly announcing, from the bald forehead to the forehead of the young virgin, serenity, noble pride, self-possession in God, security of conscience, and not a shadow of regret or envy? The man of the cabin smiles at the man of the lordly dwelling; respect brings only upon his lips a tinge of contentment, and contentment is but the terrestrial expression of a higher and more deeply-seated sentiment. Elsewhere, … it is no longer the same; envy has furrowed every brow, and lighted up all eyes. How should it be otherwise? Jesus Christ had founded the proprietorship of the poor, their dignity, and their blessedness; you have adulterated them all. You have lessened the property of the poor by the increase of property in the hands of unbelievers, more or less returned to Pagan egotism; you have lessened the dignity of the poor in attacking Jesus Christ, who is its source; you have lessened the blessedness of the poor by persuading them that wealth is everything, and that happiness, the daughter of the purse, is assessed and inscribed in the great ledger of the national debt. You will reap the fruits of your labours. This country has many wounds; but the most grievous of all perhaps is that of economy, that rage for material prosperity which precipitates all men upon that lean and sickly prey which we call earth. Return, return to the infinite: the infinite alone is vast enough for man. Neither rail-ways, nor high chimneys for your wonderful steam-engines, nor any other invention, will add an inch to the extent of the earth; even were it as profuse as it is niggardly, as unlimited as it is confined, it would still be nothing but a theatre unworthy of man. The soul alone has food for all, and joy for an eternity. Steer your course to this haven in full sail; give back Jesus Christ to the poor, if you desire to render to them their real patrimony; all that you may do for the poor without Jesus Christ, will but increase their inordinate desires, their pride, and their misery.

(1) 1st Epistle to the Corinthians, ch. 7, v. 20, 21.
(2) Epistle to Philemon, v. 9, 10, 12, and 16.
(3) St. Luke, ch. 6, v. 24.
(4) Zechariah, ch. 9, v. 9.
(5) St. Luke, ch. 4, v. 18.
(6) St. Matthew, ch. 11, v. 4, 5.
(7) St. Matthew, ch. 11, v. 25.
(8) St. Matthew, ch. 25, v. 40.
(9) St. Matthew, ch. 5, v. 3.