Today, the 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Roman Catholics around the world who attended Mass heard the first reading, a fiery denunciation of the rich by the Prophet Amos: Thus says the LORD the God of hosts: Woe to the complacent in Zion! Lying upon beds of ivory, stretched comfortably on their couches, they eat lambs taken from the flock, and calves from the stall!
Then, we heard the parable of the rich man and the poor Lazarus in Luke 16:19-31, one of the most powerful warnings in the Bible against living in luxury at the expense of the poor:
Jesus said to the Pharisees: “There was a rich man who dressed in purple garments and fine linen and dined sumptuously each day. And lying at his door was a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who would gladly have eaten his fill of the scraps that fell from the rich man’s table. Dogs even used to come and lick his sores.
When the poor man died, he was carried away by angels to the bosom of Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried, and from the netherworld, where he was in torment, he raised his eyes and saw Abraham far of and Lazarus at his side.
And he cried out, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me. Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am suffering torment in these flames.’
Abraham replied, ‘My child, remember that you received what was good during your lifetime while Lazarus likewise received what was bad; but now he is comforted here, whereas you are tormented Moreover, between us and you a great chasm is established to prevent anyone from crossing who might wish to go from our side to yours or from your side to ours.’
We in the United States ought to take this very seriously. We tolerate a higher rate of poverty in this country than throughout the rest of the world, according to a public interest project through the Washington University’s School of Social Work.
This study reports that “…the U.S. rates of poverty are substantially higher and more extreme than those found in the other 25 nations. The overall U.S. rate using this measure stands at 17.8 percent, compared to the 25 country average of 10.7 percent. The Scandinavian and Benelux countries tend to have the lowest rates of poverty. For example, the overall rate of poverty in Denmark is only 5.5 percent.”
Not only that, incredible as it sounds, we tolerate higher poverty rates among our own children than other countries around the world. “Looking at the poverty rates for children we see similar patterns. The United States again leads all nations in having the highest rates of child poverty at 20.9 percent, while the overall average stands at 11.7 percent. Again, we see the Scandinavian countries having the lowest rates of child poverty, with Denmark seeing only 2.9 percent of its children falling into poverty.
What has happened to us? You would think our own hearts would rebel at these facts, but in case we have any doubts, Jesus tells us the parable of the rich man, unnamed, and the poor Lazarus, to make this immorality clearer.
However, the story gets worse, much worse.
Since his first day in office, January 20,President Trump launched what can only be called a war on the poor. First, he cut programs that provide food and welfare assistance not only for the impoverished in foreign countries but also for the hungry and poor in the United States, people who are the poor Lazarus in our modern context.
By March, his administration had shut down U.S. AID, the primary U.S. foreign assistance for the past 60 years. He cancelled most of its contracts, thereby ending U.S. funding for the U.N. World Food Program emergency programs, the programs that have been “helping keep millions alive in Afghanistan, Syria,
Yemen and 11 other impoverished countries, many of them struggling with conflict,” according to an April 7 report of Associated Press.
The impact of these cuts have been devastating. Consider the following:
- The medical journal Lancet has estimated that U. S. AID programs have saved over 90 million lives over the past two decades. If the Trump Administration cuts continue through 2030, it’s possible 14 million people might die who might lived, the researchers estimated.
- In the U.S., the administration canceled food aid shipments which resulted in nearly 94 million pounds of food not being delivered to U.S. food banks through the Emergency Food Assistance Program, according to a Oct. 3, 2025 report from ProPublica.
- It isn’t just food that is cut back, but also education and healthcare. Oxfam, the joint project of 17 independent non-profit organizations around the world, estimates that “at least 23 million children stand to lose access to education, and as many as 95 million people would lose access to basic healthcare, potentially leading to more than 3 million preventable deaths per year”, according to a Nov. 6, 2025 Oxfam report.
By November 5, it is estimated that 600,000 people, of which two-thirds are children, have already died. This estimate comes from a story in The New Yorker by Atul Gadande, a surgeon and public health researcher who was working at AID at the time of the cuts. Along with his story, The New Yorker has posted 22-minute documentary on the impact of these cuts on one family, called Rovina’s Choice, posted on The New Yorker‘s site as well as now showing on YouTube
But don’t we need to cut the U.S. budget deficit? Well, let’s see. How much as the cancellation of U.S. AID’s programs saves each U.S. taxpayer? The answer: $24 a year. At the same time, the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” has cut taxes on the rich that will save the top 1 percent of taxpayers $132 billion in 2027, $105 billion in 2029, $93 billion in 2031, and $93 billion in 2033. This amounts to a total of $422 billion in tax cuts for the top 1 percent during these years, according to a July 3 analysis by the Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy based on data from the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation.
$24 a year in savings vs. $132 billion of tax cuts in a single year? Obviously, Trump’s priorities, and those of all who support and collude with him, have nothing to do with “government efficiency” or “balancing the budget.” Partly it’s the result of pure racism, because many of these needy people live in Africa. But to a larger degree, I think it also shows how much the rich despise the poor, people who the rich don’t think are worthy of helping or saving. After all, the success of the show they are the “deserving ones?” Doesn’t the poverty and misery of the poor show they don’t have the energy and drive to pick themselves up?
However you put it, this inversion of values is the ultimate triumph of the so-called conservative revolution launched since the Reagan presidency to overturn the New Deal. The “conservatives” have succeeded in erecting a new “Old Deal,” a copy of the first from the Gilded Age in the 1890s. They have shown their priority fealty to the worship of Mammon.
If this sounds too rhetorical, there’s actually an empirical way to measure the impact of these federal assistance cuts. In killing 600,000 this year, we have done the same as, depending of the wide differences of estimates, dropping between four to ten Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs on the poor of the world,
Do we take this seriously, or are we just hypocrites?
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