This October 9, Pope Leo has promulgated his first message to the faithful in a magisterial document: Dilexi Te. It is an apostolic exhortation on the heart of the Gospel: the embrace of the poor.
Below are 20 brief excerpts from the document, which can serve as individual reflections for prayer and for sharing. The paragraph numbers are included so later you can find them in context.
You can read the whole document at the Vatican website here.
~
5. Love for the Lord, then, is one with love for the poor. [...] This is not a matter of mere human kindness but a revelation: contact with those who are lowly and powerless is a fundamental way of encountering the Lord of history. In the poor, he continues to speak to us.
13. ... Yet if we acknowledge that all human beings have the same dignity, independent of their place of birth, the immense differences existing between countries and regions must not be ignored.
15. ... The fact that some dismiss or ridicule charitable works, as if they were an obsession on the part of a few and not the burning heart of the Church’s mission, convinces me of the need to go back and re-read the Gospel, lest we risk replacing it with the wisdom of this world.
42. ... charity is not optional but a requirement of true worship.
45. ... Augustine puts the following words in the Lord’s mouth: “I received the earth, I will give heaven; I received temporal goods, I will give back eternal goods; I received bread, I will give life … I have been given hospitality, but I will give a home; I was visited when I was sick, but I will give health; I was visited in prison, but I will give freedom. The bread you have given to my poor has been consumed, but the bread I will give will not only refresh you, but will never end.” The Almighty will not be outdone in generosity to those who serve the people most in need: the greater the love for the poor, the greater the reward from God.
56. ... Monks and nuns cultivated the land, produced food, prepared medicines and offered them, with simplicity, to those most in need. Their silent work was the leaven of a new civilization, where the poor were not a problem to be solved, but brothers and sisters to be welcomed.
75. ... The Church, like a mother, accompanies those who are walking. Where the world sees threats, she sees children; where walls are built, she builds bridges. She knows that her proclamation of the Gospel is credible only when it is translated into gestures of closeness and welcome. And she knows that in every rejected migrant, it is Christ himself who knocks at the door of the community.
76. Christian holiness often flourishes in the most forgotten and wounded places of humanity.
79. ... when the Church bends down to care for the poor, she assumes her highest posture.
83, 89. The Church’s Magisterium in the past 150 years is a veritable treasury of significant teachings concerning the poor. ... Pope Francis recognized that in recent decades, alongside the teachings of the Bishops of Rome, national and regional Bishops’ Conferences have increasingly spoken out.
91. Charity has the power to change reality; it is a genuine force for change in history.
92. ... the dignity of every human person must be respected today, not tomorrow.
93. ... the poor are promised only a few “drops” that trickle down ...
95. As it is, “the current model, with its emphasis on success and self-reliance, does not appear to favor an investment in efforts to help the slow, the weak or the less talented to find opportunities in life.” [100] The same questions keep coming back to us. Does this mean that the less gifted are not human beings? Or that the weak do not have the same dignity as ourselves? Are those born with fewer opportunities of lesser value as human beings? Should they limit themselves merely to surviving? The worth of our societies, and our own future, depends on the answers we give to these questions.
102. ... It is evident that all of us must “let ourselves be evangelized” by the poor and acknowledge “the mysterious wisdom which God wishes to share with us through them.”
104. No Christian can regard the poor simply as a societal problem; they are part of our “family.” They are “one of us.”
109. While it is true that the rich care for the poor, the opposite is no less true. [...] Lives can actually be turned around by the realization that the poor have much to teach us about the Gospel and its demands.
119. It is always better at least to do something rather than nothing.
120. A Church that sets no limits to love, that knows no enemies to fight but only men and women to love, is the Church that the world needs today.
