The Preferential Option for the Poor - Liberation Theology, a Call to Action

Liberation Theology is a school of action which stems humanity of Christ which makes Him one with us, in suffering, in injustice, in loneliness, in poverty, and precisely because of them He understands and loves us deeply, keeping us company through the deserts of our lives. Although Stephen Pattison declares that the only way God can appear to a starving man is in “a loaf of bread, not in prayers or words of comfort.” He seems to speak from a very “first world – materialistic” view, away from Third World realities. It is then that a developed country pastoral theology becomes “myopic” and cannot see that for the poor of the poorest a hug, a look, a word, a smile, wrapped in real love and compassion mean more than a piece of bread. Disadvantaged people are not only hungry for food but for compassion, they lack absolutely everything, they are invisible, they only posses two things our indifference and our rejection. Mother Theresa (1910-1997) states: There are many in the world dying for a piece of bread … But there are many more dying for a little love. Doing Liberation Theology is giving our-selves in love and in compassion to the poor. In sharing their fate we bring more than a loaf of bread that could be finished in an instant, we liberate ourselves and we liberate them by allowing the presence of God to dwell in the world, through action we acknowledge and make possible the incarnation of God and the coming of the Kingdom. Not to be myopic let’s look at the world as Gutierrez does when he paraphrases Teilhard de Chardin and Charles Peguy: “God is not at our back, pushing us along on our journey. God is before us, revealed in the thousands of faces of human beings in the different circumstances of life. So it is, that the faith that I love is hope … the hope of seeing God in my encounters with human beings