The preferential option for the poor can be understood in an overly narrow way if it is identified solely with the help we give to people in situations of economic poverty. For the lay faithful, immersed in building society through their work, there is a more everyday and at the same time more demanding way to begin living it. It consists of allowing grace to transform their hearts, making them capable of discerning the concrete needs of the people before them and feeling personally challenged by them. The starting point, therefore, is not asking where the poor are whom they should help, but rather a much more immediate question: who needs something from me that I am able to provide?

The first answer might seem surprisingly close to home. It could be my client. It could be the patient who comes to my office, the student who participates in my class, the citizen awaiting a response from the government, the employee whose job depends on a managerial decision, the family who uses the product we’ve designed, or the person who walks down the street every morning—a street that someone is responsible for keeping clean. They all have a need. And precisely because they have a need they cannot satisfy on their own at that moment, they find themselves vulnerable in relation to that need. I, on the other hand, possess something they need: knowledge, time, authority, experience, technical skills, resources, or simply the concrete possibility of performing a task. This is the point at which work can become service.

Transformation begins in the heart

The preferential option for the poor does not begin with a specific external activity. It begins with an inner transformation. Benedict XVI expresses this with particular clarity in Deus caritas est. When referring to Christian service, he points out that professional competence is indispensable, but that it alone is not enough. A “formation of the heart” is necessary, which comes from an encounter with God in Christ and which enables a person to open themselves inwardly to others. This is the fundamental movement.

A personal relationship with Christ progressively transforms what matters to us. The other person’s problem ceases to be exclusively theirs. It begins to affect us. We can no longer simply observe it from the outside. Francis expresses it similarly when he explains that what the Spirit stirs up is not primarily activism, but “an attention focused on the other.” From this attention arises a genuine concern for the other person and, from that, the desire to truly seek their good. This sequence is crucial for understanding the sanctification of work: the relationship with Christ gives way to the action of grace, which transforms the heart; this transformation directs attention toward the other, awakens a real concern for their needs, and moves us to truly seek their good. Grace does not directly provide the professional solution. But it provokes something prior: it makes us want to find it.

The first recipient is the one who receives my work.

This allows us to understand professional activity in a different way. Every job well done solves a problem for someone. That is one of its fundamental characteristics. The doctor provides an answer to an illness. The teacher helps overcome a lack of knowledge. The lawyer provides guidance in the face of a legal problem. The engineer creates a technical solution. The entrepreneur organizes resources to provide goods or services. The cook satisfies a need for food. The cleaner allows other people to find a decent and habitable space. Even highly sophisticated activities retain this basic structure: someone has a need, and someone puts their skills at the service of a possible solution.

Therefore, the first place where Christians can witness the transformation wrought by grace doesn’t necessarily have to be outside their profession. It’s right in front of them. It’s their clients. Broadly speaking, “client” here refers to the recipient of one’s work: the person who will bear the consequences of what I do. The Christian question then begins to be formulated in an extraordinarily concrete way: to what extent do I truly care about their problem? Because it’s possible to complete a task without taking on the recipient’s problem. It’s possible to see a patient and want to finish the consultation quickly. It’s possible to teach a class without worrying too much about whether the students have learned. It’s possible to sell a product without asking whether it’s truly an adequate solution. It’s possible to complete a file without giving much thought to the citizen who is waiting. Grace introduces a different logic. It makes the professional stop focusing exclusively on the task and start looking at the person for whom that task matters.

If I care about someone else’s problem, I need to know more.

From this point, a particularly demanding consequence arises. If the client’s problem truly matters to me, I have a reason to try to understand it better. And if I want to understand it better, I have a reason to study. The pursuit of professional competence then acquires a different motivation. I no longer study simply because I want to advance professionally, gain recognition, or stay up-to-date. I study because there is someone who needs an answer that I don’t yet know how to provide well enough. Concern for the recipient becomes a source of professional rigor. Saint Josemaría expresses this relationship precisely when he says, “To serve, serve.” He immediately explains its meaning: “It is not enough to want to do good; one must know how to do it.” And he adds that if one truly desires to do good, that desire must translate into the effort to acquire the necessary competence and employ the appropriate means to complete tasks with human perfection.

This statement is fundamental. Competence isn’t something that complements service; it’s a requirement of service. Good intentions don’t excuse incompetence when it was reasonably within our power to acquire the necessary knowledge. If I’m a doctor, I’ll have to study because my patient needs a proper diagnosis. If I’m a teacher, I’ll have to delve deeper because my students need to understand. If I’m a business owner, I’ll need to get to know the customer better because I can’t offer them a suitable solution if I don’t truly understand their needs. If I hold public office, I must understand the consequences of my decisions because others will live with them. The phrase that summarizes this logic could be very simple: I need to know more because you need a better answer.

Professional excellence thus enters into sanctification

From this perspective, we can understand why professional excellence is not simply an added human aspiration to the sanctification of work. It is an integral part of it. Saint Josemaría describes Saint Joseph as someone whose work was informed by the spirit of service. His activity was not oriented toward self-affirmation. Joseph thought of Jesus, Mary, and also the people of Nazareth. And precisely for this reason, he “helped many people out of trouble” through work done well. Excellence is directly linked to the recipient. It is not about being excellent in order to be recognized as excellent. It is about working well because someone needs what we are doing.

This also helps avoid a significant misunderstanding. Holiness doesn’t necessarily mean that a Christian has to be the best professional in their field. Abilities, talents, and circumstances vary. The requirement is different: to take seriously enough the needs of those who depend on our work to seek the best response reasonably within our reach. That is the excellence inherent in the logic of service.

Work psychology confirms the importance of the recipient

This concept also has interesting support from contemporary psychological research. Adam Grant has spent years developing the notion of prosocial motivation : the motivation that arises when a person wants their work to have a positive effect on others. His theory of relational job design shows precisely that the way a person understands the relationship between their work and those who experience its consequences can modify their motivation, their actions, and even how they understand their own professional identity. When workers can perceive the beneficiaries and recognize the effect their activity has on them, the likelihood increases that they will want to make a positive difference in their lives. Intuition is remarkably close to what we are proposing here: the recipient of the work can become a source of motivation.

Grant and his colleagues also experimentally demonstrated that contact with beneficiaries can increase work persistence. In a study of people dedicated to raising funds for university scholarships, brief contact with a student beneficiary subsequently led to significant increases in persistence and performance compared to the control groups. In another series of field experiments, Grant found that making the importance of the work to others visible increased the performance of fundraisers and enhanced the dedication and helping behaviors of first responders. The mechanisms were related to the perception of social impact and the value that one’s work held for others. These results do not prove any thesis about the action of grace; they operate at a different level of analysis. However, they help identify an important human mechanism: when the worker perceives more clearly the person who receives the effects of their effort, they can find new reasons to persist and perform better. This is precisely what happens when a Christian stops seeing simply a task before them and discovers a recipient.

Helping freely also transforms the one who helps.

The research by Netta Weinstein and Richard Ryan adds another dimension. In four studies, they found that helping behaviors motivated by autonomous desire—that is, because the person genuinely wants to help and not simply out of obligation—produce positive results for both the helper and the recipient. This effect is related to the satisfaction of the helper’s own basic psychological needs. The finding is significant because it confirms that not all seemingly prosocial behavior has the same psychological meaning. Simply fulfilling an obligation is not enough; motivation matters.

This again aligns with the inner transformation we’ve been describing. Christians shouldn’t limit themselves to technically performing a task for someone. The transformation of their hearts leads them to want what they do to truly benefit that person. Professional excellence then ceases to stem solely from external controls or incentives. It finds a much more powerful internal source: responsibility toward the recipient.

Studies on meaningful work, from a different perspective, arrive at a similar conclusion. Michael Steger, Bryan Dik, and Ryan Duffy identify three dimensions of meaningful work. One of these is precisely the perception that one’s work contributes to a greater good that transcends the individual. This helps explain why service-oriented work can also transform the worker. When a person understands that what they do responds to a real need, studying ceases to be merely an obligation, persevering ceases to be simply discipline, and improving a solution ceases to be mere perfectionism. There is a reason external to oneself; there is someone else on the other side.

Where do the poor appear then?

This approach allows for a more practical understanding of the preferential option for the poor. It wouldn’t be necessary to begin by establishing a distinction between those I must serve professionally and those—the poor—whom I must help charitably. The dynamic can be much more integrated. First, I learn to serve the person in front of me; I learn to discover their need; to take ownership of their problem; to use my abilities to solve it. And precisely because grace has been transforming my perspective, I also begin to notice other people who have similar needs but less capacity to find a solution.

This is where preference comes into play; not because other people cease to matter, but because those with fewer resources, less knowledge, fewer connections, less negotiating power, or fewer opportunities to access my services have a particular need for what I can provide. Poverty then acquires a relational dimension: without intending to replace economic or sociological definitions of poverty, it can be said that there is an asymmetry that is morally relevant: the other person needs something, and I possess a capacity that can help provide it.

I have something to offer: I have knowledge, experience, contacts, authority, an organization, research capabilities, teaching skills, time, and access to institutions that person can hardly access. The preferential option begins when I recognize this difference and ask myself what responsibility it creates for me.

This way of framing the question makes the preferential option considerably more demanding. Because it avoids immediately transferring it to an extraordinary activity. A company manager might ask themselves if there are any of their own employees with problems that their managerial skills could help resolve. A teacher might discover students who need more support because they come from less privileged educational backgrounds. A doctor might find among their patients those who have the most difficulty understanding a treatment. An entrepreneur might ask themselves if there are potential customers whose needs remain unmet because the sector has never designed an appropriate solution for them. A manager might identify small suppliers who need to develop the capacity to integrate sustainably into the value chain. A researcher might discover socially relevant problems that receive little attention precisely because those who suffer from them have little capacity to finance or bring them to light.

The preferential option for the poor often begins with a very specific question: who around me needs something that I know how to do and has less chance of getting it?

Charity compels us to study the problems

This perspective allows us to revisit one of Benedict XVI’s most profound formulations in Caritas in Veritate . Speaking of the relationship between charity and knowledge, he states: “Without knowledge, action is blind, and knowledge is sterile without love.” He reminds us that those motivated by true charity strive to discover the causes of poverty and find appropriate means to combat it. Therefore, he insists that charity demands “knowing and understanding,” respecting the specific competence of each field of knowledge. The consequence is powerful: the preferential option for the poor does not diminish intellectual demands; it increases them. If I truly want to solve another person’s problem, I need to understand it rigorously.

Charity can lead to studying economics; it can lead to studying technology; it can lead to analyzing data; it can require understanding a territory; it can demand conversations with experts; it can force a re-evaluation of a seemingly obvious solution; it can even lead to recognizing that what one initially wanted to do for another person was not what that person needed. A transformed heart does not replace intelligence; it provides it with a reason to work more intensely.

From this follows a particularly important consequence. The preferential option for the poor does not mean offering those with less a lower-quality version of what we offer those who can pay more. On the contrary, precisely because they have less ability to replace a defective solution, inadequate care can cause them greater harm. This is why this preferential option demands professionalism.

Poor education is especially detrimental to those who cannot compensate for it later; a bad financial product particularly affects those with little wealth; inadequate infrastructure particularly harms those without alternatives; an incomprehensible public procedure particularly affects those who cannot afford to hire someone to help them; a confusing medical recommendation is especially problematic for those with less education or fewer resources. Taking the poor seriously also means taking the quality of what is offered to them very seriously.

The preferred option starts close and then widens the radius

A different sequence can then be formulated than the one usually imagined. It doesn’t begin simply with poverty, followed by a moral obligation, and finally, by helping others. It begins more profoundly in the encounter with Christ, which gives way to the action of grace and the transformation of the heart. This transformation directs attention to the person before us, allows us to recognize their need, and gives rise to the responsibility to find a solution; this responsibility demands study and competence, excellent work, and ultimately, effective service. From there also arises an additional movement: the transformed heart develops a special sensitivity toward those with fewer opportunities and places its own abilities at their disposal, thus making the preferential option a reality. This preferential option does not replace ordinary service; it arises from having truly learned to serve.

A professionally demanding preferred option

This could be a specifically lay way of understanding the preferential option for the poor. It doesn’t consist primarily of abandoning one’s profession to do something else. It consists of allowing grace to penetrate so deeply into our professional activity that it transforms the way we see the recipient of our work. First, we learn to discover the client—not simply the one who pays, but the one who has a need that our work aims to address. Their problem begins to matter to us. This interest compels us to understand it better. To understand it, we need to study; to solve it, we need competence; to provide an appropriate solution, we need order, perseverance, collaboration, humility, and innovation. Professional excellence thus emerges as a consequence of service.

And when this way of seeing gradually becomes a part of us, we also begin to discover people who have the same needs but fewer opportunities to find a solution. Then preferential option emerges. Not as a side activity; not as an added obligation imposed from the outside, but as the natural expansion of a heart that has learned to take responsibility for the needs of others.

Perhaps it could ultimately be formulated this way: the preferential option for the poor begins when grace enables me to look at the person before me and seriously ask myself what they need from me. And my professional work constitutes the first instrument for responding. Therefore, serving them demands competence and excellence; and precisely when I learn to serve in this way, I discover more clearly those who have a need that my abilities can address but who have fewer means to obtain a response. Preferring them then means also making available to them what I have learned to do well.

Understood in this way, the preferential option for the poor does not distance the layperson from their profession: it obliges them to take it much more seriously, because their professional competence becomes something they have to offer. And the excellence of their work becomes a concrete way of loving.

References

Benedict XVI. (2005). Deus caritas est, especially n. 31. Holy See.

Benedict XVI. (2009). Caritas in veritate, especially nos. 30-31. Holy See.

Escrivá de Balaguer, J. (1973). Christ is passing by, nos. 50-51.

Francis. (2013). Evangelii gaudium, especially nos. 197-201. Holy See.

Grant, A. M. (2007). Relational job design and the motivation to make a prosocial difference. Academy of Management Review, 32(2), 393-417.

Grant, A.M., Campbell, E.M., Chen, G., Cottone, K., Lapedis, D., & Lee, K. (2007). Impact and the art of motivation maintenance: The effects of contact with beneficiaries on persistence behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 103(1), 53-67.

Grant, A. M. (2008). The significance of task significance: Job performance effects, relational mechanisms, and boundary conditions. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(1), 108-124.

Steger, M.F., Dik, B.J., & Duffy, R.D. (2012). Measuring meaningful work: The Work and Meaning Inventory. Journal of Career Assessment, 20(3), 322-337.

Weinstein, N., & Ryan, R. M. (2010). When helping helps: Autonomous motivation for prosocial behavior and its influence on well-being for the helper and recipient. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98(2), 222-244.