This is a sacramental gift of faith. Many times, at the Catholic Worker or some similar place of caring, I have seen paintings of Christ seated among the poor. Christ's generous love, the living sign of God's mercy and compassion, evokes a response of gratitude and generosity from the hearts of the thoughtful believer. This loving response of gratitude should be the fount of all real concern and work undertaken by Christians for the world. Religion can have many motives, spiritual or mundane, but this is the highest.
Generous charity is the medicine of the soul.
It is the response that Our Lord called for in the Sermon on the Mount, in the parables and, most of all, by His actions. Through it we can avoid making our image of God simply a projection of self-centered needs. Any true return to the values of the Gospel must be accompanied by a generous and unequivocal love for those in need. As a community we rejoice that we give an opportunity for others who cannot work directly with the poor to serve Christ through us and our works. Every Monday morning you can find Christ standing among the simple and needy souls who come for the weekly distribution of food at St. Crispin's Friary.