When a sadhu refuses to acknowledge a temple built on tears, Rabindranath Tagore's Deeno Daan becomes a moral mirror for our times. From Pope Leo XIV's reminder—"If you lack charity, you rob your neighbour of hope"—to Mother Teresa's map of hidden poverty, St Francis' embrace of Lady Poverty, and Gandhi's loincloth as a quiet revolt against imperial arrogance, we, readers and believers alike, are all challenged: Can worship be true if it ignores suffering? Can we see God in the poor, in solidarity?

A Sadhu's Refusal and a King's Awakening
The King stood proud before his new temple. But when he invited the revered sadhu to bless the shrine, the holy man declined. His gentle voice cut deep: "There is no god in that temple." The sadhu's refusal was a defence of God's dwelling among the dispossessed.

Tagore's poem, Deeno Daan, is prophetic. It exposes the hollowness of ritual divorced from justice, and it asks a question that still stings. Can we claim to honour the divine while ignoring the displaced, the hungry, the forgotten?

The World Day of the Poor: A Prophetic Lens
This question lies at the heart of the World Day of the Poor (November 16) instituted by Pope Francis in 2016 and deepened by Pope Leo XIV in his 2025 exhortation Dilexi Te (I have loved you). The phrase itself is derived from the Latin of Revelation 3:9, where the Lord addresses a faithful but marginalised community, saying, "I have loved you." Pope Leo XIV uses this scriptural declaration as the theological anchor for his exhortation on love for the poor. Celebrated annually on the 33rd Sunday of Ordinary Time, the observance is a moral summons. It asks whether we are willing to see God in the poor. Not in theory, but in practice. Not in pity, but in partnership. Not in sermons, but in solidarity.

Pope Francis, in his inaugural message, warned against a culture of indifference. "Let us love, not with words but with deeds," he wrote. Each year, his reflections have grown sharper, insisting that poverty is not a fate—it is a scandal. In 2024, he reminded us that "the prayer of the poor rises up to God," and that such prayer is not always spoken—it is lived, endured.

Pope Leo XIV, in Dilexi Te, echoes this urgency with theological depth and pastoral clarity. Drawing from Revelation and the Magnificat, he affirms that God's love is revealed in solidarity with the lowly. He identifies three dimensions of poverty—material, moral, and spiritual—and calls for a spirituality of encounter. The poor, he insists, are not objects of pity but subjects of grace. Faith without proximity to suffering remains only an abstraction.

The Poor as Sacrament: A Theology of Encounter
One of the most powerful theological insights emerging from this tradition is the idea of "the poor as sacrament." Although not a phrase coined by his namesake predecessor, Pope Leo XIII, it is deeply rooted in the legacy of his 1891 encyclical, Rerum Novarum, which laid the foundation for Catholic social teaching. Leo XIII insisted that the poor are not passive recipients of charity. They are agents of justice, endowed with dignity and rights. His vision prefigures the sacramental theology later developed by Vincentian spirituality and echoed by Pope Francis, who frequently refers to the poor as "the flesh of Christ."

To call the poor a sacrament is to say that they are more than mere symbols of suffering. They are living signs of divine presence. Just as the Eucharist is a visible sign of invisible grace, so too is the encounter with the poor a sacred moment. Their suffering is a spiritual summons. Their dignity is holy. To serve the poor is not to descend from above like someone mighty deigning to come down. It is to rise into communion.

This theology challenges us to rethink worship, policy, and community. It asks whether our temples, our liturgies, and our institutions truly reflect the Gospel if they ignore the poor.

St Francis of Assisi and Mahaprabhu Chaitanya: Poverty as Path to Communion
St Francis went beyond serving the poor. He gave up everything. He stripped himself of all possessions to follow Christ without barrier or buffer. He called poverty his bride, Lady Poverty, and found liberation in her. For Francis, poverty was the path to communion with Christ crucified, and with all who suffer. His life remains a luminous witness to the Gospel lived without compromise.

In Bengal's bhakti tradition, Mahaprabhu Chaitanya mirrored this radical surrender. Born into privilege, he renounced status and scholarship to walk the streets in ecstatic devotion, embracing the poor, the outcast, and the forgotten. His kirtans were public acts of spiritual defiance, dissolving caste and hierarchy in the rhythm of divine love. Like Francis, Chaitanya saw no distance between God and the lowly. His poverty was a revelation, and his dances were encounters.

Together, these two figures—Francis and Chaitanya—remind us that true worship begins where ego ends. That the poor are not beneath us—they are beside us. And that the divine is not confined to sanctuaries—it walks barefoot in the streets.

Mother Teresa: A Map of Hidden Poverty
Mother Teresa of Calcutta did not speak of poverty as just numbers. She saw it in the faces, in the hollow eyes of the abandoned, the trembling hands of the dying, the silence of the unloved. For her, poverty was about empty hearts as often as it was about empty stomachs. She often said, "The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread."

Walking through the alleys of Calcutta, she saw poverty in many forms. There was the material poverty she confronted daily—people without food, shelter, or medicine. But she also spoke of emotional poverty, the aching loneliness she witnessed in affluent societies, where people died of isolation. She saw spiritual poverty in those who had everything yet felt nothing—no faith, no hope, no connection. She lamented relational poverty, where families fractured and the elderly were left to fade alone. She warned of moral poverty, where conscience was dulled and life devalued, and of cultural poverty, where reverence for tradition and the sacred was eroded by consumerism.

For Mother Teresa, these were wounds. And her response was presence. She knelt beside the dying, held the forgotten. She reminded the world that poverty is what we refuse to share.

Interfaith Wisdom: Justice, Not Charity
This teaching is not uniquely Christian. In Islam, zakat is not charity; it is a form of justice. In Judaism, tzedakah is a moral obligation, not a gesture. Hinduism speaks of "daridra Narayana"—God dwelling in the poor. Buddhism calls for compassion as a path to liberation. Sikhism upholds seva, or selfless service, as a sacred duty. Across traditions, the message is clear: the poor are not "them." They are "us." And God is not above them—God is among us.

Gandhiji's Warning and the Call to Conscience
Gandhiji said, "The world has enough for everyone's need, but not enough for everyone's greed." His words echo the sadhu's protest and the Pope's plea. They remind us that justice begins with small refusals—refusals to exploit, to ignore, to forget.

He also understood the power of presence over proclamation. When he chose to wear a simple loincloth, it was a confrontation. It was his way of saying: "I will not dress above the dignity of those I serve." In that act, he exposed the moral nakedness of an empire clothed in exploitation. His simplicity was protest. His solidarity was sacramental.

Charity as Hope: A Final Word from Pope Leo XIV
Pope Leo XIV, in Dilexi Te, offers a final reminder: "If you lack charity, you rob your neighbour of hope." This statement calls us to account. Charity is not mere almsgiving—it is the active choice to see, to listen, to respond. It is the refusal to scroll past suffering, to ignore injustice, to mock vulnerability.

For today's cybercitizens, this teaching has urgent applications. To lack charity online is to contribute to despair. To weaponise language, to shame the struggling, to dismiss the displaced are not neutral acts. They rob others of hope. But to practice charity—to affirm dignity, to share truth, to build bridges—is to restore it.

The World Day of the Poor is a lens through which we can view the world. It asks us to look again at our temples, our policies, our hearts. It dares us to believe that the face of God is not hidden—it is simply ignored. And it invites us, like the sadhu, like Francis, like Teresa, like Gandhi, to choose worship that does not silence suffering, but walks with it.

Excerpts from Deeno Daan
"There is no god in that temple," said the Saint.
The King was enraged;
"No God? Oh, Saint, aren't you speaking like an atheist?
On the throne studded with priceless gems, beams the golden idol,
And yet, you proclaim that's empty?"
"It's not empty; It's rather full of the Royal pride.
You have bestowed yourself, oh King, not the God of this world,"
Remarked the Saint.
The King frowned, "2 million golden coins
Were showered on that grand structure that kisses the sky,
I offered it to the Gods after performing all the necessary rituals,
And you dare claim that in such a grand temple,
There is no presence of God?"
The Saint calmly replied, "In the very year in which twenty million of your subjects were struck by a terrible drought;
The pauperised masses without any food or shelter,
came begging at your door, crying for help, only to be turned away,
they were forced to take refuge in forests, caves, camping under roadside foliage, and derelict old temples;
and in that very year
when you spent 2 million gold to build that grand temple of yours,
that was the day when God pronounced:
'My eternal home is lit by everlasting lamps,
In the midst of an azure sky,
In my home, the foundations are built with the values:
Of Truth, Peace, Compassion and Love.
The poverty-stricken, puny miser,
Who could not provide shelter to his own homeless subjects,
Does he really fancy giving me a home?'
That is the day God left that temple of yours.
And joined the poor beside the roads, under the trees.
Like emptiness of the froth in the vast seas,
Your mundane temple is as hollow.
It's just a bubble of wealth and pride."
The enraged King howled,
"oh you sham cretin of a person,
Leave my kingdom this instant."
The Saint replied calmly,
"The very place where you have exiled the Divine,
Kindly banish the devout too."
--Rabindranath Tagore, transl. Sandipto Das Gupta