Sunday Mass Sermon- How are you Caring For The Poor?

Word on Fire Ministry ^ | 9.25.22 | Bishop Robert Barron

[MurphsLaw]

Sundays readings highlight the need for the poor to be taken care of.
Social teaching that is an often overlooked requirement of our Faith.

14 min. YouTube link below.

How Are You Taking of The Poor?

[MurphsLaw]

When... "counting the cost" hits home.
More hard sayings...

[keving]

My taxes pay for children’s education health food housing, Senior medication, hospitalization and stipend, researching medicines for the world and feeding the world and any problem they have my taxes pay for it. So I guess I pay for everything and you have the Gaul to as if I help anyone. You are a joke!

[roving]

I have given plenty to the homless I see. Deferred payments to charities from my paycheck. I once picked a hitchhiker up and drove him 100 miles and dropped him off at his door.

I do what I can.

[Hambone 1934]

Welllll,I’m not slaughtering poor women and their babies in abortion clinics.....Progressive Christians, is God okay with that?????

[joma89]

I try to teach the poor that democrats hate them and not to vote for democrats. However, the useful idiots still vote for democrats and I do not care anymore the consequences they suffer.

[roving]

They paid taxes in Jesus’s time also. I’m sure the rich man paid his fair share.

[Mark]

Teach them to fish.

[fidelis]

Ebenezer Scrooge would be right at home on this thread. From Charles Dickens, “A Christmas Carol”:

"At this festive season of the year, Mr Scrooge, ... it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir."
Scrooge-"Are there no prisons?"
"Plenty of prisons..."
Scrooge-"And the Union workhouses. Are they still in operation?"
"Both very busy, sir..."
"Those who are badly off must go there."
"Many can't go there; and many would rather die."
Scrooge- "If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population!"

[antceecee]

Sorry, who has emulated Scrooge on this thread? Sincerely…explain.

[MurphsLaw]

And really, the homily was not too incriminating, just a hinting...

If you want a real hard core standard to be a "Christian"
one that we all- or most all - fail at spectacularly - well check this charitable ideal out...

I read this from CS Lewis and think of my turn in Matt 25... and I'm like ..oh #$=*!!!

I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give.
I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare.
In other words, if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements, etc,
is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own,
we are probably giving away too little.
If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us,
I should say they are too small.
There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do
because our charitable expenditure excludes them.

[fidelis]

Sorry, who has emulated Scrooge on this thread? Sincerely…explain.

Just the general tenor of "I pay my taxes to fund all kinds of services for these people so I shouldn't be expected to personally help them out if the occasion arises."

Perhaps this works from a non-Christian viewpoint, but not from a Christian one. As someone pointed out above, the rich man in the story was not portrayed as being dishonest or otherwise sinful in any other way and probably dutifully gave the required official alms for the poor at the temple, but that is not what he was judged for.

Deuteronomy 15:7-8
If there is a poor man among your brothers within any of the gates in the land that the LORD your God is giving you, then you are not to harden your heart or shut your hand from your poor brother. Instead, you are to open your hand to him and freely loan him whatever he needs.

Mark 5:42
Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.