A Film by Gerard Thomas Straub
©2007, 150 MIN.
Poverty and Prayer, featuring scenes from our first five films, is one of the most popular films produced by The San Damiano Foundation. It's follow up, Poverty and Prayer II, features scenes from our four newest films. With these two films we have captured the breadth and essence of the ever-growing SDF library. Each act in this series divides into manageable scenes, each one a perfect teaching tool for small group, classroom or congregational settings.
In this film, you will come face to face with the poor. Jesus chose to be poor. We wish he hadn't. We are embarrassed by his poverty; it makes us uncomfortable. Jesus suggests that poverty is a privileged path, that the poor possess an eminent dignity. We don't get it. We do not choose to be poor. In fact, we run from poverty, avoid it like a sickness, work towards security and self-reliance. For us, there is nothing "blessed" about being poor.
To understand poverty, one must enter the poverty of another, as Jesus entered our poverty. The impoverishment of a drug addict named Michael in the Kensington section of Philadelphia is our poverty. It is a deep mystery to see Christ in the poor, to become one with the poor and, in so doing, discover our own poverty and begin to strip away the "self" as we are reborn into a new life hidden in Christ. |
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