We invite you to discover, through his writings, Blessed Giacomo Cusmano (1834–1888), a priest who founded the congregations of the Misionary Servants of the Poor and the Sisters Servants of the Poor, and who was known for his charity toward the needy and the sick.

Giacomo Cusmano wrote numerous letters, homilies, and spiritual notes in which we encounter a man whose spirituality was rooted in active charity, seeing in every poor person the face of Christ. For this reason, he not only helped the needy with his own resources but also organized the work of the “Boccone del Povero” [“the Morsel of the Poor”], which mobilized the community to provide food for the most destitute.

Text of Giacomo Cusmano:

Do you want to see Jesus? … Look at the poor! They are like another sacrament because in the person of the poor, Jesus is hidden.

You who profess to love God, the hidden God, Deus absconditus, do you also want to love Him better? Do you wish to love Him as He wants and deserves? Come with me, I will lead you to the poor, to the house of Christian love, to the house of charity.

—Giacomo Cusmano, Boccone spirituale, October 6.

Commentary:

In this passage, Blessed Giacomo Cusmano invites us to discover the poor as “another sacrament.” This statement is as daring as it is profoundly evangelical. Cusmano, a man of ardent faith and boundless charity, reminds us that Christ is not hidden only under the Eucharistic species, but also in the wounded flesh of the poor.

The opening question—“Do you want to see Jesus?”—touches one of the deepest longings of the Christian heart. The whole of the spiritual life can be summarized in that desire to contemplate the face of the Lord. The psalms echo it repeatedly: “Your face, Lord, I will seek” (Ps 27:8). The apostles lived it daily in their relationship with Jesus, and the mystics longed for it in their ecstasies.

Yet the vision that Cusmano proposes is not an extraordinary mystical one but an incarnate, concrete faith: to see Jesus, it is enough to look at the poor. This is no poetic illusion but a certainty of faith.

Cusmano calls the poor “another sacrament.” What does this mean? In Catholic theology, the sacraments are visible and efficacious signs of grace. Christ makes Himself present and acts through them.

When Cusmano affirms that the poor are like a sacrament, he is not inventing an eighth sacrament, but rather stressing that in them the presence of Christ is so real, so mysterious, and so demanding that only a sacramental heart can recognize it. The poor are not symbols or metaphors rather they are the real flesh in which Christ has chosen to hide Himself.

Here the patristic tradition resounds: Saint John Chrysostom taught that if you wish to honor the body of Christ, do not adorn it only on the altar but also in the body of the poor, because the same Christ who is in the Eucharist is also in the hungry. Saint Vincent de Paul, whose charism inspired Cusmano, repeated to his missionaries that to serve the poor is to serve Christ Himself.

Cusmano uses the expression Deus absconditus, the “hidden God,” taken from the prophet Isaiah (Is 45:15). God does not reveal Himself in the glory of the powerful but in what is hidden, humble, despised. In His Incarnation, Christ became that hidden God: born in a manger, living among the poor, dying as a criminal.

The poor, then, become an extension of that mystery. Where everything seems to indicate God’s absence—hunger, pain, illness, abandonment—faith reveals that God is more present than ever. Those who love the hidden God must learn to seek Him where He hides: in the suffering flesh of the poor.

Cusmano poses a provocative question: “Do you want to love Him better? Do you wish to love Him as He wants and deserves?” It is a warning to those who reduce the love of God to devotional practices or interior feelings. Certainly, to love God involves prayer, liturgy, and adoration, but if that love is not translated into concrete charity, it is incomplete—indeed, even illusory.

Cusmano invites us: “Come with me, I will lead you to the poor, to the house of Christian love, to the house of charity.” Charity is not an isolated act or an occasional almsgiving; it is a place where one dwells. The “house of charity” is that vital space where the Christian encounters Christ through service to the poor.

This image of the house is deeply Vincentian: a community, a spiritual family in which everyone belongs, especially the most needy. It is there that true fraternity is built. It is there that the Church becomes visible as a “field hospital,” to use Pope Francis’ expression.

To recognize the poor as sacrament requires overcoming inner obstacles. It is not always easy to see Christ in them. Poverty unsettles, destabilizes, sometimes frightens but precisely that discomfort is part of the mystery: Christ wanted to become uncomfortable so as to draw us out of our indifference and force us into concrete love.

We cannot love the hidden God without entering into a relationship with His concrete incarnation in the poor. Those who seek a comfortable love of God, without consequences, have not yet understood the Gospel.

Speaking of the poor as sacrament helps us understand that serving them is not mere philanthropy but an act of faith. When we care for the poor, we are celebrating a living liturgy, a spiritual worship.

Just as in the Mass we receive communion with the Body of Christ under the species of bread and wine, in service to the poor we receive communion with the same Christ under the species of human suffering. This vision transforms charity into a sacrament of encounter, a place of grace.

Cusmano’s message has enormous importance for our time. We live in a world that often separates religion from social commitment, as if they were distinct domains. Some adore Christ in the temple but ignore Him in the street. Others serve the poor for humanitarian reasons but fail to recognize the Lord in them.

Cusmano breaks down that separation: true faith in the “hidden God” necessarily leads to the poor, and true service to the poor is lived as an act of love for God. There is no contradiction, because it is the same Christ whom we encounter in both places.

Those who dare to enter the “house of charity” experience a radical transformation. They discover that love for God is no longer an abstract idea but a concrete face, a personal story, an urgent need. They discover that Jesus is not a memory of the past but someone living, present in every poor person.

That experience changes the way one prays, celebrates, and lives. It becomes clear that the Eucharist does not end at the altar but continues in the streets, in hospitals, in poor neighborhoods. There, communion with the Lord is prolonged.

Cusmano reminds us powerfully that to see Jesus is not the privilege of a few but a gift open to all: it is enough to look at the poor with the eyes of faith. In them we find Christ, hidden as in a sacrament, awaiting our love.

Love of God becomes true, full, and concrete when it becomes love for the poor. To enter the house of charity is to enter the very house of God.

Suggestions for personal reflection and group discussion:

1. What does it mean for me to recognize the poor as “another sacrament”?
2. How can I help others discover Christ hidden in the poor?

Let us pray:

Lord, give us new eyes
to discover your hidden presence
in the wounded faces of the poor.

May we not search for grand signs,
but for the humility of your hidden love,
where the world sees only absence.

Teach us to enter the house of charity,
to live each encounter as a living liturgy,
to recognize you in suffering flesh
that calls us to service and surrender.

Make our faith concrete,
our worship carried into acts of love,
and our communion with you
fulfilled in closeness to the least of all.

Amen.