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On my first pilgrimage to the poor over ten years ago, I was stunned by the truth of the words of Philip Scharper. Before his death he was the founder and publisher of Orbis Press, the publishing arm of the Maryknoll Fathers. At a presentation he made to seminarians in Cleveland in the mid-1980’s he defined poverty as “the absence of choices.” As I’ve watched the news broadcasts of the devastation in Haiti over the last week and a half, that understanding of poverty continued to haunt me. I have again relived that grace-filled experience. Walking through Cité Soleil (City of the Sun) and its forgotten masses or visiting a children’s hospital where newborn infants were so malnourished that survival was barely a viable option, I was witness to the absence of choices. Even before the quake, our Haitian brothers and sisters had as few choices as they did ten years ago.When I arrived home from that visit, I remember going to do my grocery shopping at a mega-supermarket in a Cleveland suburb. As I pushed my cart to get my cereal, I was confronted by an aisle as long as the ones in some churches, stacked six feet high with every variety of breakfast food imaginable. My instant oatmeal had six flavors! I had all those choices, and my brothers and sisters in Haiti had none. The sight of that aisle of cereal was more traumatic, more life-transforming, than the poverty I saw in Haiti! I stood there hanging onto that cart for dear life trying to reconcile why all that abundance was at my disposal. Was I somehow better than my brothers and sisters in Haiti? It was a real crisis in faith.I figured I had one of two choices. I could feel guilty. And as a Catholic I could be very good at that! Or I could be grateful. Interesting isn’t it? Our word “Eucharist” is derived from a Greek word “eucharistia,” which means “giving thanks.” It’s as if we come to the Eucharistic celebration each week for a reality check. Everything we have is a gift, so we “give thanks.” Our ritual action has, or should have, a profound effect on the way we see ourselves and the way we live our lives. The choices I have in my life needed to be seen in such a broader context.The Scriptures today echo that theme. The context of these readings is set in ritual assemblies. The Israelites returning from the Babylonian exile had forgotten many of their traditions and their meaning. Recalling their destiny through the words of the prophet moved them to tears, for they had allowed their circumstances to blur the vision of the law. Nonetheless, their charge is to rejoice.“Today is holy to the LORD your God.Do not be sad, and do not weep”— for all the people were weeping as they heard the words of the law.He said further: “Go, eat rich foods and drink sweet drinks,and allot portions to those who had nothing prepared;for today is holy to our LORD….”It is in the similar context that we see Jesus entering the synagogue to proclaim the Word. He chooses the prophet Isaiah to characterize his mission and the mission that must be embraced by his disciples. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor.He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captivesand recovery of sight to the blind,to let the oppressed go free,and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.What we must connect to our lived experience at this time and in this place is that before we can do all that the Christ asks of us, we must first be what he asks us to be. We first must see ourselves as “the poor” to whom the glad tidings are brought. We must allow our sight to be restored: being able to see, to understand, that all we have is gift. We must allow ourselves to be liberated from the captivity of consumerism, the shackles of self-sufficiency. Only when we empty ourselves as he did can we effect “a year acceptable to the Lord.”When we are confronted by the scenes of devastation in Haiti and see that their poverty is indeed the absence of choices, the Scriptures today help us understand that we must be one with them, because we are, as St. Paul tells us, all of one body in Christ. To contribute to the relief effort is a visceral response, and not one to be ignored. But there is a greater response that the Word of God calls us to. We must identify ourselves with their absence of choices, by recognizing that all is gift. That is why, like the Israelites liberated from captivity, we might want to weep at our forgetfulness. But instead we gather around the altar to give thanks, to celebrate that all is gift:“Go, eat rich foods and drink sweet drinks,and allot portions to those who had nothing prepared;”