... In the final analysis, poverty does not exist; only poor persons exist. If we serve the poor impersonally, we still connive with those who depersonalize them. The evil rich man of the parable is anonymous, like the death that disfigures man; the poor man of the parable is a person with a name: Lazarus, because when all is said and done this poor man is Jesus. He is Jesus not by a juridical pretense or by a pious shift of focus that unites us to Christ without real reference to the poor, but because of the shattering realism of the Incarnation of the poor son: in him God becomes poor, so that henceforth the poor are God. "What you did to the least of these little ones...": the final judgment on all of our human behavior is based on the identity of Jesus and this poor person. The suffering of each man is the suffering of Jesus, who makes it his own. It is because of this mystical realism that each man is saved by Christ. Our death is no longer ours, but his who died and rose for us. If Jesus were simply a model of poverty, we would still be prisoners of our death. He would not be the Good Samaritan who takes the human race on his back and pours out his life-giving spirit upon it. [...] In his kenosis, the Son of God made his own the suffering of every poor person; conversely, through love he suffers mysteriously in every man--for is there any man who is not poor-until "he has destroyed the veil which used to veil all the peoples" and "has destroyed death forever"? (Is 25: 7-8) This is what he means when he says "You have the poor with you always" (Mk 14:7), just as "I am with you always; yes, to the end of time" (Mt 28:20). Because Christ in his body really passed through death and destroyed it, he can now incorporate into himself those who are still enslaved to death. The kingdom of God is in our midst because the Body of Christ is still with us in this way. Love can spread because the kenosis from which it streams forth is the death in which he was buried with us and for us.
-- The Wellspring of Worship. Ignatius (2005) pp. 243-44
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