Margaret Anna Fridays

I am getting back into the groove of Margaret Anna Fridays, even if blogging has been light as I try to balance school, community, and family commitments. This blog feature is a favorite where I share some words of wisdom from the founder of my religious community, Margaret Anna Cusack, known in religion as Mother Francis Clare. She was a prolific writer, with more than 200,000 copies of her works in circulation by 1870. This week's installment is from her seminal (and controversial) 1887 book, The Question of Today: Anti-Poverty and Progress. She asks many challenging questions in this work, including:

We are, then, put face to face with the great fact of Poverty, we are put face to face with the certain consequences of the continuance of such a condition of things, and if we have one spark of humanity we are put face to face with the question, What can we do personally and individually to lessen poverty, if we cannot abolish it?