You have left poverty as an inheritance to all those who want to be your disciples,' Charles de Foucauld said, addressing Christ. However, the Church never succeeds in identifying herself fully with the poor. Every day we experience some exclusion, some distance, which means that the Church cannot identify fully with the Kingdom of Heaven and that her center is outside herself. Cardinal Etchegaray also recalled that throughout the centuries the renewal of the Church has always been effected through the alliance with the poor. Hence, the enormous misunderstanding that exists between economic and spiritual poverty, to the point that the blessing of poverty becomes laughable in a society of plenty.
Apostolic poverty is the hardest but surest test of the authenticity of evangelization.
When I was the bishop of Marseilles, I called Mother Teresa so that she would create among us a foundation of her Sisters of Charity. With the end of the Holy Year, we must pray much to implore and receive this grace of poverty, today more necessary and more difficult than ever, to struggle against the soulless riches and hopeless poverty that sift our society. We urge orthopraxis as an expression of orthodoxy, not as any substitute for it. Traditional Catholic Reflections, write TCR PO BOX 1006 Littleton, MA 01460.