Poverty Means Being Free
by Dorota Swat
Sister Małgorzata takes care of the homeless and the poor. She had only come to Rome for a few days and when I met her, she had just been to the Mass celebrated by the Pope at Santa Marta where she also met Archbishop Konrad Krajewski, the Pope’s Almoner. She is radiant and it shows. Answering my questions in a practical and comprehensive way, every so often, as if by habit, she would again press me as to whether I would like something to eat.
How did you become acquainted with the Bread of Life Community?
By chance. During the Communist period, my friend and I did various things for the marginalized which at that time were barely legal. We sought a place or a community suited to our needs, in other words we wanted to live with these people: someone gave me the address and we went to France.
In Poland today Bread of Life has various houses, workshops and even an online shop.
The Community was started in Poland in 1989 when the first house for the homeless was opened. I organized it with my best friend and Maciej Rayzacher, an actor. It was not long before we associated it with the Bread and Life Community. Its mission consists in living with the poor around Christ in the Eucharist. We want to live with the poor – not work for them – because they are not people we assist but rather our brothers and sisters. This is of essential importance in our reciprocal relations – and we seek to point to Christ in the Eucharist as Lord and Saviour, as the only One who can heal our wounds, show us the way and give us love. We had no plan. The people who appeared on our path with their problems were questions for us. And so it still is today. The first home came into being because we met some homeless people. At a certain point a girl came to see us in the country in order to borrow 50 złoty (approximately 12 euros) for her school fees; if she did not pay she would be expelled and it was her diploma year. We gave her the money and we began to care for other people in similar difficulty. So it was that a scholarship fund was set up (which currently supports 600 young people). When they came to us, in the same place in the country, they were unemployed and embarrassed and looking for something to eat. They wanted to work and so we began to wonder about how to find work for them. Little by little the workshops and building teams sprang up. There are many very sick people among the homeless and they need special treatment, so we opened a home for the sick. Mothers with small children could not be placed with other women who had psychological or alcohol problems: we had to set up a house especially for them. That is how it works.
Do you also work with the disabled?
The great problem of the disabled exists, especially in the country. They live in squalid conditions. If a farmer kept his pigs like that he would be sent to prison. So it was that we started restructuring or building houses for families in difficulty in which the parents or children (or both) had some form of disability. There are numerous young people with mild mental disabilities. They are too intelligent to qualify for a disability allowance but too unskilled to live independently. In any case they would all like to work: in our workshops they are given the opportunity. Among them there are frequently young people who grew up in orphanages and have never had a proper adult life. They live in rooms with others, they always depend on someone, while with our discreet assistance they could manage very well and even have a family.
Do you think that over and above declarations of principle, the Church truly accepts disabled people, especially those who are mentally disabled?
No. Of course, there are places, communities and priests who work with the mentally disabled, but they are a small minority. Recently in a parish there was reluctance to let a disabled boy receive Communion: a priest of ours went there and gave it to him because the boy was about to die. I think these people are VIPs in the Kingdom of God, and yet we marginalize them. Do we find the weak, elderly women and the disabled in important places in our Church?
How do you understand poverty?
Poverty is not wretchedness. I do everything I can to ensure that the people in our houses, which are very modest, live with dignity, that the place is clean, the atmosphere pleasant and the grass cut. Poverty is not a relative concept because it concerns billions of people in this world and is a real and sorrowful predicament. It means uncertainty about the future, powerlessness and anguish for dear ones and the impossibility of satisfying their needs. Poverty also teaches us to trust in God’s Providence, because we tangibly experience that God truly exists. In our community we are very often left without anything and then we start praying: after a little while someone comes, bringing us something. In practice poverty means being free.
Blessed are the poor. Would you say that the people who live in your houses are relatively happy?
The level of satisfaction of the “clients” receiving various services in Warsaw was recently assessed, including our clients in the homes for the poor. You know in Poland those who receive social assistance are called “clients”. Thus a young pollster came to us and asked a 35-year-old homeless person, ill with cancer: “are you pleased?”. This is of course absurd. Poverty in itself does not give happiness: I would say, on the contrary, it makes for unhappiness. Those who live in our homes are either people who were well-off and had a family or people who were underprivileged from birth, who have never had anything: life in the community and feeling that they are loved gives both these groups happiness. I therefore think that on the whole they are happy, of course in the deep sense of the word. In our houses, despite great suffering, there is joy, people laugh and joke. Certainly this blessing works when people discover that love really is the highest value and that God loves us without bounds, in a noncritical way, just as a mother loves her child independently of what he or she is like. Indeed a mother loves her child who is suffering the most, more. I have five adopted children, one, Artur, is autistic: even though he is a difficult boy, he is the house’s favourite. He loves cigarette lighters, he collects them and pushes them into empty bottles. Everyone in the house has a lighter in his pocket to give to him so that even he can be happy for a moment. Poor people find the happiness we fail to see because we are busy seeking it elsewhere. For them, perhaps, it is easier to discover true happiness: the greatness of poor people consists in this.
Helping the poor requires money. Are there rich people among your benefactors?
Margaret Thatcher said that to be a Good Samaritan one must have money. This is true of course. We seek to earn our own bread as best we can: in our houses all those who are able to do so work. The first thing we do to preserve the dignity of new arrivals is ask them to set the table. The money and material things we receive are of course a gift of Providence, but obviously it is people who donate it to us and they are often not well off! One day I phoned a lady: she asked me if I wanted a car. I answered “yes”. It was a four-wheel-drive, perfect for the country but a most luxurious model with leather seats. We immediately attached a notice to it on which the word “donation” was written. Usually, however, it is harder for rich people to share because from the stylish offices of multinationals in the centre of Warsaw, Paris, London or Rome they have difficulty in seeing those at the bottom of the ladder. Instead, those who face life’s difficulties day after day understand better. When we attain a certain level of wealth, we distance ourselves from the sources of human solidarity, from sympathy and from bonds with others: this is the risk that many rich people run. I know some of them. They are full of goodwill but incapable of understanding “the other” person. Their poverty lies in this. We live in a competitive society that immediately teaches children that they must be better than others. Are the children of poor people chosen to welcome the bishop to the parish? Is it they who recite the poems?
What can be done? Should the system of social assistance be changed?
There is no doubt that the system of social assistance needs perfecting but the problem is that the weakest people, those who are born in disadvantageous conditions, are unable to fit into a system where it is essential to know many things, how to use a computer, how to fill in forms at a bank, how to speak a language they do not know. In creating such systems we exclude them. They are not even marginalized, for to marginalize a person it is necessary to see him or her first. They are quite simply people who do not exist. Our role as Christians must be to “frame” the problem, because many people do not see it. Nothing can replace one human being meeting another human being: what counts are relationships, sharing and mutual support. Our residents do not only take: they also give us very much. Relationships are created, exchanges without which there would be neither love nor respect. No one can be helped for life. However, this is precisely what modern systems of assistance do. The excluded are given the minimum conditions for survival but are not permitted to regain entry into the system of normal economic, cultural, educational and spiritual life. It is a far more difficult task to put people in a condition to be able to manage on their own, to live dignified lives, to earn their livelihood and support their family.
Sr Małgorzata Chmielewska is the superior of the Bread and Life Community founded by Pascal and Marie Pingault. The French couple, who converted in adulthood, decided in 1971 to live the Gospel radically with a group of friends. After thirteen years the community was recognized by the Church as an association of lay faithful. Its members, consecrated lay people, live together with the poor. In Poland the community manages homes, dormitories for the homeless, for the sick and for single mothers. The Bread and Life Community Foundation organizes and trains the sick and the homeless in various trades to enable them to work, and awards scholarships to children in rural areas.
© Libreria Editrice Vaticana 2015
This item 10982 digitally provided courtesy of CatholicCulture.org
