The ideas that Martin Luther King addressed back in the 1960s was not just issues of society and culture, they were issues of equality.
The same challenges are still prevalent today. The call to respect and care for each other as sisters and brothers isn’t just political or a sociological statement.
Jesus once said, “if you love me, feed my sheep.” One of the greatest commandments is to love God with all our hearts and minds, but the second one is like it, to love our neighbour as ourselves.
Concerns about racial equality, poverty, homelessness and healthcare and the marginalisation of the voiceless and powerless are moral issues; they are issues that people of faith must be engaged in. If this exciting moment in time is going to be anything other than a short lived feel good moment, all of us must be partners in the change we seek.
Our role is to continue to raise our voices for more just systems, for eradication of poverty, for policies that don’t discriminate on the basis of race, gender, physical ability or sexual orientation, to encourage and support and pray for peace.
We are called to do this not because particular political perspective but because of our belief in a still speaking God, who is a God of love and a God of justice.
Yes, Poverty is a wretched thing. In the monastic tradition we parasite simplicity of life.
We request that people should make do with what they have not seeking of being swallowed up by materialistic desire.
But we have no right to glamorise poverty as if it is a wonderful thing. The question we must answer is where do we find our poor? There are many among us who are poor, they are lonely and live in both urban and rural areas. These people are unwanted by most in the community.
The modern age is becoming more like an unwanted age. The poor have little opportunity for education and because of this, there are those among us who do not know what life is and have to make do with an existence that is deprived and unfulfilled. Irrespective of someone’s colour the poor tend to be pushed around.
Jesus said, “Anybody who as much does this to these my little ones has done it unto me.’’ And this is what we should do as a community.
As a community, we must do all that we can to alleviate and eradicate poverty. We must use everything at our disposal to enhance the life of the poor and to enhance the life of the poor and to enable them to rediscover the dignity, which they have lost through deprivation.
While rediscovering their dignity we as a community will also discover who our neighbour is.
One way to discover this is through giving back as a community and with giving back comes our blessings. In order to have a more stable society every one of us should know that in the end contentment will not be achieved by cluttering your life with possessions.
The community should enable people to come alive! We should not be frightened by poverty but should follow in the steps of the Master who lived simply and had nowhere to lay his head.
As a community, we should go out to those who are at this time so brutalized either by crime or through violence, and help them realize that they are not alone.
We must meet the poor in our streets and get them to proclaim their own liberation, for it is only the people themselves who can restore their own lives. As a God-centered and spirit filled community we will be able to do these things without hesitation.
It is only through knowing exactly what the agonies of the poor are, through close identification and giving oneself in compassion and not through condescending pity that we can evaluate ourselves as a nation.
Therefore a new year has dawned. A new thinking dominates. Pledges for betterment. To do for others. As though we were the others.