A beautiful church needs to prioritize serving the poor

Having costly adornments and gold chalices needs to be met with an equal passion for the poor, sick and suffering of the local community.

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One of the biggest complaints against the Catholic Church is that we have expensive buildings and costly vestments, while neglecting the poor and most vulnerable.

While it may seem like a modern argument, it has been around for centuries and has some truth to it.

Certainly the Church continues to serve the poor on a global scale, but the complaint should be focused more on ourselves than the Church as an organization.

Do we serve the poor?

St. John Chrysostom was dealing with this problem in the 4th century and wrote about it in a homily on the Gospel of Matthew:

Do you want to honor Christ’s body? Then do not scorn him in his nakedness, nor honor him here in the church with silken garments while neglecting him outside where he is cold and naked. For he who said: This is my body, and made it so by his words, also said: You saw me hungry and did not feed me, and inasmuch as you did not do it for one of these, the least of my brothers, you did not do it for me. What we do here in the church requires a pure heart, not special garments; what we do outside requires great dedication.

Sometimes we can get caught-up in the beauty of the liturgy and focus too much of our attention on what the priest wears at Mass, while neglecting those in our local community.

St. John Chysostom continues, “Peter thought he was honoring Christ when he refused to let him wash his feet; but what Peter wanted was not truly an honor, quite the opposite! Give him the honor prescribed in his law by giving your riches to the poor. For God does not want golden vessels but golden hearts.”

Above all things Jesus wants our hearts to be focused on him and to serve him in every person we meet.

At the same time, this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t worship God with great splendor, and St. John Chysostom points this out as well:

Now, in saying this I am not forbidding you to make such gifts; I am only demanding that along with such gifts and before them you give alms. He accepts the former, but he is much more pleased with the latter. In the former, only the giver profits; in the latter, the recipient does too. A gift to the Church may be taken as a form of ostentation, but an alms is pure kindness.

Essentially we need to strive against being a hypocrite, practicing what we preach and matching our worship of God with service to our neighbor.

The key is to not point a finger outwards and claim that the Church does many things for the poor, but to point the finger at ourselves and ask, “Do I serve the poor?”