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People in very precarious situations play a key role in the Gospels. But how can we hear what they have to say? Listening to their stories allows us to discover that they perceive the same reality as us, but from another point of view. They confront us with primordial existential questions. Encountering them produces an epoché effect that forces us to get back to basics, relegating the incidental to the background. This listening exercise proves all the more justified in that it sheds new light on questions such as hope, the cross, salvation, forgiveness, the figure of Christ, and memory. In fact, is there any way of understanding faith without the participation of those in some form of distress? We are invited to embark on a new way of looking at theology, by allowing the destitute to guide us back to the very sources of human experience, in the knowledge that what they are experiencing resonates with us all.