Sharing With The Poor

Pope Francis will be known as the Pope of the Poor.  It is with intention and purpose that in almost every statement he makes, he mentions the poor and keeps prodding all of us to share what we have with them.  This is no new message:  In Psalm (33/34) we read that "The Lord hears the cry of the poor" (v. 17) and also in Psalm 69:33, "the Lord takes care of the needy."   St. John Chrysostom, one of the early Church Fathers, spoke of the discrepancy between gold threaded altar cloths and gold chalices, while outside the church people in rags were shivering with the cold and their empty stomachs.  He was quick to say, these are incompatible, and in our modern jargon, we would say, "unacceptable."  He said that it is not wrong to honor he Lord with golden vessels, but only AFTER we have taken care of the poor.
We pass panhandlers on the streets, (and wonder how legit they are), our daily mail is full of solicitations, and the phone often rings with pleas for this or that cause.  It is maddening, to say the least, but this constant hammering in line with the Pope's messages should make us stop and evaluate our use of goods, money, time and talent.  And certainly the institutional Church, though it does much already and has huge financial burdens, still needs to stop and look at lifestyle and the way it disperse funds donated by the people in the pews.  Lord, if I were poor, how grateful I'd be if someone would hear my cry for help.  Let me not be deaf to the cry of the poor.
Bro. Rene