“How we treat the poor is how we treat God. For this reason, Jesus asks us to make a preferential option for the poor:
When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or sisters, your relatives or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous. Luke 14:12-14
Reaching out, preferentially, to the poor is an essential component of the spiritual life.
Ronald Rolheiser in The Holy Longing: The Search for Christian Spirituality (New York: Doubleday, 1999) 65.