Living Alms

The world is a sorrowful place. This Lent we’re beset with news of war and suffering in Ukraine. The news – so heartbreaking and overwhelming – has drowned out news of continued suffering in Haiti, China, and Afghanistan. News from abroad drowns out the sufferings at home. How can we grieve for the whole world at once? What can we do to help?

It often seems that, on the large scale, we can do nothing. World leaders aren’t interested in letters or even protests. But political power is not the only, or even the greatest power at work in the world. There are so many tiny ways that we can love our neighbors through the sorrows and fears that surround us.

This is Lent. The season of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. We should pray and fast for the suffering of course. But what of almsgiving? How do we give alms to people a world away? How do we give alms to the people we see every day? Does it always have to be just the handing over of cash to charitable organizations? In a time when many of us don’t have much cash to spare or don’t trust the organizations to use it well, is there another way to give alms?

As Pope Leo XIII reminds us in Rerum Novarum, “No one is commanded to distribute to others that which is required for his own needs and those of his household; nor even to give away what is reasonably required to keep up becomingly his condition in life” (RN 22). We’re also commanded by Christ Himself to be “wise as serpents” (Matthew 10:16) – so it’s essential we learn to discriminate between truly charitable organizations, and those with more mercenary tendencies.

Living Alms

You came when you were needed
I could not ask for more
than to turn and find you walking
through the kitchen door.

— Kate Wolf*

Fortunately, there is another way. It involves a little more work, but the rewards are greater. Unlike simply giving financial alms (which we should also do whenever possible), giving “living alms” allows for relationships to develop between unlikely friends. It allows us to build memories with another person that will comfort and sustain them for years to come.

Living alms are the gift of time we give to people in need. Like Christ dining with tax collectors and spending his days talking to dismissive Pharisees, living alms are times when we offer ourselves to those in need.

It doesn’t need to be a big production. You don’t need to volunteer with every (or any) ministry. You don’t need to drive to a poor neighborhood or spend time talking to prisoners. All it takes is a willingness to sacrifice some small comfort to ease another person’s pain.

Today, at the grocery store I watched a young man giving living alms. He was in line with a few items when an older woman stepped into line behind him. He politely gave her his spot in line, but then he offered more. With a warm smile and a few quick words, he helped her feel seen and connected. I could see it in the sudden smile on her face, the softening of her shoulder, the gentle laugh. They joked about food prices and the challenge of affording anything on a fixed income or blue-collar wages. Then they went their separate ways, but I know she went home feeling a bit lighter at heart.

The willingness to come “when you [are] needed” with love to the poor is essential to the Christian life. Too often we limit “poverty” to material poverty. The Church, however, insists that our necessary “love for the poor … extends not only to material poverty but also to the many forms of cultural and religious poverty” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2444). This means that our almsgiving must be equally broad.

Welcoming the Poor

If it weren’t for kitchen songs
and mornings spent with friends
we all might lose the things we love the best.

— Kate Wolf*

I bake weekly for my parish bread guild. Every Thursday morning, a little before seven, we gather in the church hall kitchen to mix, knead, bake, and pray. With our hands in the dough and our aprons floury, we tell stories about our fathers, mothers, siblings, spouses, children, and lives beyond the little kitchen. Our bread is some of the best in the state – my brother is consistently asking me to overnight sourdough loaves to him. We sell it at the local farmers market, at nearby stores, and farm stands. The proceeds are keeping our social ministries afloat – and our parish is alive with community-minded ministries.

The social ministries reach people who might never step into my parish to hear our choir or experience the beauty of the Mass. But they reach those of us within the parish as well. There’s something deeply healing about weekly mornings spent with people who have become dear friends.

On my way to bake one morning I met a man who talked my ear off. It was early in 2020, and he was on his way to the gas station. He didn’t need anything, but he walked there every day just to talk to someone. “I live alone,” he said, “and my kids won’t visit now. They’re worried about getting me sick – about killing me.” He looked me in the eye then and said – in typical, blunt, New England fashion, “I said: well, you’re killing me now, so don’t pat yourself on the back.”

The poverty of loneliness can’t be alleviated with money. But too often we’ve abandoned “kitchen songs and mornings spent with friends” in favor of safety, financial security, or the hopeless pursuit of an ideal community. We’ve lost the things that make us rich. The only way to gain back our wealth is to give it away to the poor, who are all Christ in disguise.

* Kate Wolf, “The Trumpet Vine,” Gold in California, 1977, Another Sundown Publishing Co., Kaleidoscope Records.