Have you ever wondered what it means to not be seen by others? There are many people who, not feeling welcomed in the parishes where they worship, eventually make the hard decision to leave the Catholic Church.
As a non-citizen myself, I know many immigrants—mostly those who are non-white or who don’t speak English—who were Catholic when they first arrived in the United States but who have since stopped going to Mass. And as a Black person who regularly attends and sometimes ministers in predominantly white parishes, I can appreciate how easy it is to feel out of place in those spaces. I can testify that it makes all the difference to people who might easily feel out of place in a liturgical assembly to hear words of welcome addressed to them. Christ, by his words and actions in the Gospels, teaches us that it is not enough to merely tolerate the presence of the other. We must extend our hands, hearts, touch and kindness to them.
While it is our collective responsibility, St. Paul urges us, “to accept one another” just as Christ has accepted us (Rm 15:7), we must always give special attention to people whose life situation makes them particularly vulnerable.
Echoing the longing of those in poverty for “respect, acceptance, and recognition” from their church, the synthesis report from the first session of the Synod on Synodality also acknowledged that poverty can render people invisible even in their church, and can take many forms:
Poverty is not just of one kind. Among the many faces of those in poverty are those who do not have the things they need to lead a dignified life. There are also migrants and refugees; indigenous peoples, original and Afro-descendent peoples; those who suffer violence and abuse, in particular women; people struggling with addiction; minorities who are systematically denied a voice, abandoned elderly people; victims of racism, exploitation, and trafficking, especially minors; exploited workers, the economically excluded, and others living on the peripheries.
Addressing these different forms of poverty begins when we consciously try to ensure everyone we encounter feels seen, welcomed and accepted. “Every individual Christian and every community,” says Pope Francis in his apostolic exhortation “Evangelii Gaudium,” “is called to be an instrument of God for the liberation and promotion of the poor, and for enabling them to be fully a part of society” (No. 187). He adds that we are only able to do this when we learn to “be docile and attentive to the cry of the poor and to come to their aid.”
The pope also reminds us that the Gospel invites us to constantly “run the risk of a face-to-face encounter with others, with their physical presence which challenges us, with their pain and their pleas, with their joy which infects us in our close and continuous interaction” (No. 88). This encounter with others, the effort to see their pain and plea and to celebrate their joy with them, is the indispensable starting point of mission, evangelization and every Catholic social action.
True worship, as the theologian and Presbyterian pastor Mark Labberton writes in his 2007 book The Dangerous Act of Worship, “draws us into the heart of God, and as we live there, we see the neighbors God gives us: the forgotten, the marginalized, the poor, the oppressed.” In a world where an unprecedented number of people suffer from isolation and feel unloved, unwanted and judged without compassion, God is calling us to reach out and invite everyone, especially those who are most vulnerable, into his tender compassion.
This must begin in our worship spaces and liturgical celebrations. As we continue to support the work of evangelization and the charitable outreaches of the U.S. church to the poor all over the world, we must become more attentive to the poor and vulnerable people who show up in our own parishes. We must be sincerely concerned about the different challenges that immigrants, minorities and all vulnerable people face daily. We must never stop actively advocating for the human dignity of everyone, irrespective of their race, nationality, gender or sexual orientation. We must not fear to reach out to the “stranger” who shows up in a parish, to touch them with the kindness of Jesus, to learn their names, to invite them to share a meal with our families or to include them in other events.
In Enfleshing Freedom: Body, Race, and Being, the Catholic theologian M. Shawn Copeland urges us to imitate Jesus, who confronted the system of oppression and exclusion of his time “through lived example, intentionally choosing courage over conformity, moral conflict over acquiescence, and boldness over caution.” According to Dr. Copeland, “With all his heart and soul, mind and body, Jesus resisted religious and social attempts to reduce God’s anawim [“poor ones”] to nobodies.”
Where better to practice courageously reaching out to others with the love and mercy of Christ than in our worship spaces? As the theologian Bernard Häring, C.Ss.R., explained in his book The Sacraments in a Secular Age: A Vision in Depth on Sacramentality and Its Impact on Moral Life, the liturgy is both grace and mandate, for in its celebration, “we are instructed in and enabled to carry out the mission of ordering our whole social life in a way that gives praise to the grace and glory of God.”
To paraphrase the second-century church father Irenaeus, nothing gives more glory to God than human beings fully alive and flourishing. As we give praise and glory to God through our songs and prayers during Mass, let us ensure we are also attentive to the suffering and struggles of all people, beginning with the people who join us in our liturgical spaces.
