Poor and rich alike are called to freedom

63. God does not want people — namely, all men and women — to be poor, because Our Creator cries out to all through each one of those living in poverty. God tells us quite simply that the poor, like the rich who are blinded by their wealth, are mutilated beings; the poor are mutilated by circumstances which lie far from their control, while the rich are mutilated by their handfuls and with their collusion. Both are thereby prevented from finding that interior freedom to which God unceasingly calls all humanity.

By being "filled with good things", the poor are not given some selfish revenge against their ill fate, but are placed in a situation that ensures that their most fundamental capacities are not diminished. The rich who are "sent empty away" are not being punished for being rich, but they are relieved of the burden and the blindness caused by being too exclusively attached to goods of all kinds. The hymn of the Magnificat is not a condemnation, but a call to freedom and to love.

In this two-fold healing process, the poor are called to heal their hearts wounded by injustice which can lead them to hate themselves and others. The rich are called to cast off their shoddy burden. Instead they cover their ears, close their eyes and stifle their hearts, submerged under their worthless riches of money, power, image and pleasures of every kind, all which give them a narrow view of themselves and of others, as well as increase their appetites as they increase their goods.