First World Day of the Poor message released
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| Archive photo of Pope Francis visiting a deprived area on the outskirts of Rome.- REUTERS |
(Vatican Radio) The Vatican on Tuesday released Pope
Francis' message for the First World Day of the Poor which will be
observed later this year on the 19th of November.
Please find the English translation of the message
below:
Message of His Holiness Pope Francis
for the First World Day of the Poor
Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time
19 November 2017
Let us love, not with words but with deeds
1. “Little
children, let us not love in word or speech, but in deed and in truth” (1 Jn
3:18). These words of the Apostle John voice an imperative that no
Christian may disregard. The seriousness with which the “beloved
disciple” hands down Jesus’ command to our own day is made even clearer by the
contrast between the empty words so frequently on our lips and the concrete
deeds against which we are called to measure ourselves. Love has no
alibi. Whenever we set out to love as Jesus loved, we have to take the
Lord as our example; especially when it comes to loving the poor. The Son
of God’s way of loving is well-known, and John spells it out clearly. It
stands on two pillars: God loved us first (cf. 1 Jn 4:10.19), and he loved us
by giving completely of himself, even to laying down his life (cf. 1 Jn 3:16).
Such love cannot go unanswered. Even though offered unconditionally,
asking nothing in return, it so sets hearts on fire that all who experience it
are led to love back, despite their limitations and sins. Yet this can
only happen if we welcome God’s grace, his merciful charity, as fully as
possible into our hearts, so that our will and even our emotions are drawn to
love both God and neighbour. In this way, the mercy that wells up – as it
were – from the heart of the Trinity can shape our lives and bring forth
compassion and works of mercy for the benefit of our brothers and sisters in
need.
2. “This
poor man cried, and the Lord heard him” (Ps 34:6). The Church has always
understood the importance of this cry. We possess an outstanding
testimony to this in the very first pages of the Acts of the Apostles, where
Peter asks that seven men, “full of the Spirit and of wisdom” (6:3), be chosen
for the ministry of caring for the poor. This is certainly one of the
first signs of the entrance of the Christian community upon the world’s stage:
the service of the poor. The earliest community realized that being a
disciple of Jesus meant demonstrating fraternity and solidarity, in obedience
to the Master’s proclamation that the poor are blessed and heirs to the Kingdom
of heaven (cf. Mt 5:3).
“They sold their possessions and goods and distributed them to all, as any had
need” (Acts 2:45). In these words, we see clearly expressed the lively
concern of the first Christians. The evangelist Luke, who more than any
other speaks of mercy, does not exaggerate when he describes the practice of
sharing in the early community. On the contrary, his words are addressed
to believers in every generation, and thus also to us, in order to sustain our
own witness and to encourage our care for those most in need. The same
message is conveyed with similar conviction by the Apostle James. In his
Letter, he spares no words: “Listen, my beloved brethren. Has not God
chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the
kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? But you have
dishonoured the poor man. Is it not the rich who oppress you, and drag
you into court? ... What does it profit, my brethren, if a man says he has
faith but has not works? Can his faith save him? If a brother or
sister is poorly clothed and in lack of daily food, and one of you says to
them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled”, without giving them the things
needed for the body; what does it profit? So faith by itself, if it has
not works, is dead’ (2:5-6.14-17).
3. Yet there
have been times when Christians have not fully heeded this appeal, and have
assumed a worldly way of thinking. Yet the Holy Spirit has not failed to
call them to keep their gaze fixed on what is essential. He has raised up
men and women who, in a variety of ways, have devoted their lives to the
service of the poor. Over these two thousand years, how many pages of
history have been written by Christians who, in utter simplicity and humility,
and with generous and creative charity, have served their poorest brothers and
sisters!
The most outstanding example is that of Francis of Assisi, followed by many
other holy men and women over the centuries. He was not satisfied to
embrace lepers and give them alms, but chose to go to Gubbio to stay with
them. He saw this meeting as the turning point of his conversion: “When I
was in my sins, it seemed a thing too bitter to look on lepers, and the Lord
himself led me among them and I showed them mercy. And when I left them,
what had seemed bitter to me was changed into sweetness of mind and body” (Text
1-3: FF 110). This testimony shows the transformative power of charity
and the Christian way of life.
We may think of the poor simply as the beneficiaries of our occasional
volunteer work, or of impromptu acts of generosity that appease our
conscience. However good and useful such acts may be for making us
sensitive to people’s needs and the injustices that are often their cause, they
ought to lead to a true encounter with the poor and a sharing that becomes a
way of life. Our prayer and our journey of discipleship and conversion
find the confirmation of their evangelic authenticity in precisely such charity
and sharing. This way of life gives rise to joy and peace of soul,
because we touch with our own hands the flesh of Christ. If we truly wish
to encounter Christ, we have to touch his body in the suffering bodies of the
poor, as a response to the sacramental communion bestowed in the Eucharist.
The Body of Christ, broken in the sacred liturgy, can be seen, through charity
and sharing, in the faces and persons of the most vulnerable of our brothers
and sisters. Saint John Chrysostom’s admonition remains ever timely: “If
you want to honour the body of Christ, do not scorn it when it is naked; do not
honour the Eucharistic Christ with silk vestments, and then, leaving the
church, neglect the other Christ suffering from cold and nakedness” (Hom. in
Matthaeum, 50.3: PG 58).
We are called, then, to draw near to the poor, to encounter them, to meet their
gaze, to embrace them and to let them feel the warmth of love that breaks
through their solitude. Their outstretched hand is also an invitation to
step out of our certainties and comforts, and to acknowledge the value of
poverty in itself.
4. Let us
never forget that, for Christ’s disciples, poverty is above all a call to
follow Jesus in his own poverty. It means walking behind him and beside
him, a journey that leads to the beatitude of the Kingdom of heaven (cf. Mt
5:3; Lk 6:20). Poverty means having a humble heart that accepts our
creaturely limitations and sinfulness and thus enables us to overcome the
temptation to feel omnipotent and immortal. Poverty is an interior
attitude that avoids looking upon money, career and luxury as our goal in life
and the condition for our happiness. Poverty instead creates the
conditions for freely shouldering our personal and social responsibilities,
despite our limitations, with trust in God’s closeness and the support of his
grace. Poverty, understood in this way, is the yardstick that allows us
to judge how best to use material goods and to build relationships that are
neither selfish nor possessive (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, Nos.
25-45).
Let us, then, take as our example Saint Francis and his witness of authentic
poverty. Precisely because he kept his gaze fixed on Christ, Francis was
able to see and serve him in the poor. If we want to help change history
and promote real development, we need to hear the cry of the poor and commit
ourselves to ending their marginalization. At the same time, I ask the
poor in our cities and our communities not to lose the sense of evangelical
poverty that is part of their daily life.
5. We know
how hard it is for our contemporary world to see poverty clearly for what it
is. Yet in myriad ways poverty challenges us daily, in faces marked by
suffering, marginalization, oppression, violence, torture and imprisonment,
war, deprivation of freedom and dignity, ignorance and illiteracy, medical
emergencies and shortage of work, trafficking and slavery, exile, extreme
poverty and forced migration. Poverty has the face of women, men and
children exploited by base interests, crushed by the machinations of power and
money. What a bitter and endless list we would have to compile were we to
add the poverty born of social injustice, moral degeneration, the greed of a
chosen few, and generalized indifference!
Tragically, in our own time, even as ostentatious wealth accumulates in the
hands of the privileged few, often in connection with illegal activities and
the appalling exploitation of human dignity, there is a scandalous growth of
poverty in broad sectors of society throughout our world. Faced with this
scenario, we cannot remain passive, much less resigned. There is a
poverty that stifles the spirit of initiative of so many young people by
keeping them from finding work. There is a poverty that dulls the sense
of personal responsibility and leaves others to do the work while we go looking
for favours. There is a poverty that poisons the wells of participation
and allows little room for professionalism; in this way it demeans the merit of
those who do work and are productive. To all these forms of poverty we
must respond with a new vision of life and society.
All the poor – as Blessed Paul VI loved to say – belong to the Church by
“evangelical right” (Address at the Opening of the Second Session of the Second
Vatican Ecumenical Council, 29 September 1963), and require of us a fundamental
option on their behalf. Blessed, therefore, are the open hands that
embrace the poor and help them: they are hands that bring hope. Blessed
are the hands that reach beyond every barrier of culture, religion and
nationality, and pour the balm of consolation over the wounds of
humanity. Blessed are the open hands that ask nothing in exchange, with
no “ifs” or “buts” or “maybes”: they are hands that call down God’s blessing
upon their brothers and sisters.
6. At the
conclusion of the Jubilee of Mercy, I wanted to offer the Church a World Day of
the Poor, so that throughout the world Christian communities can become an ever
greater sign of Christ’s charity for the least and those most in need. To
the World Days instituted by my Predecessors, which are already a tradition in
the life of our communities, I wish to add this one, which adds to them an
exquisitely evangelical fullness, that is, Jesus’ preferential love for the
poor.
I invite the whole Church, and men and women of good will everywhere, to turn
their gaze on this day to all those who stretch out their hands and plead for
our help and solidarity. They are our brothers and sisters, created and
loved by the one Heavenly Father. This Day is meant, above all, to
encourage believers to react against a culture of discard and waste, and to
embrace the culture of encounter. At the same time, everyone, independent
of religious affiliation, is invited to openness and sharing with the poor through
concrete signs of solidarity and fraternity. God created the heavens and
the earth for all; yet sadly some have erected barriers, walls and fences,
betraying the original gift meant for all humanity, with none excluded.
7. It is my
wish that, in the week preceding the World Day of the Poor, which falls this
year on 19 November, the Thirty-third Sunday of Ordinary Time, Christian
communities will make every effort to create moments of encounter and
friendship, solidarity and concrete assistance. They can invite the poor
and volunteers to take part together in the Eucharist on this Sunday, in such a
way that there be an even more authentic celebration of the Solemnity of Our
Lord Jesus Christ, Universal King, on the following Sunday. The kingship
of Christ is most evident on Golgotha, when the Innocent One, nailed to the
cross, poor, naked and stripped of everything, incarnates and reveals the
fullness of God’s love. Jesus’ complete abandonment to the Father
expresses his utter poverty and reveals the power of the Love that awakens him
to new life on the day of the Resurrection.
This Sunday, if there are poor people where we live who seek protection and
assistance, let us draw close to them: it will be a favourable moment to encounter
the God we seek. Following the teaching of Scripture (cf. Gen 18:3-5; Heb
13:2), let us welcome them as honoured guests at our table; they can be
teachers who help us live the faith more consistently. With their trust
and readiness to receive help, they show us in a quiet and often joyful way,
how essential it is to live simply and to abandon ourselves to God’s
providence.
8. At the
heart of all the many concrete initiatives carried out on this day should
always be prayer. Let us not forget that the Our Father is the prayer of
the poor. Our asking for bread expresses our entrustment to God for our
basic needs in life. Everything that Jesus taught us in this prayer
expresses and brings together the cry of all who suffer from life’s uncertainties
and the lack of what they need. When the disciples asked Jesus to teach
them to pray, he answered in the words with which the poor speak to our one
Father, in whom all acknowledge themselves as brothers and sisters. The
Our Father is a prayer said in the plural: the bread for which we ask is
“ours”, and that entails sharing, participation and joint responsibility.
In this prayer, all of us recognize our need to overcome every form of
selfishness, in order to enter into the joy of mutual acceptance.
9. I ask my
brother Bishops, and all priests and deacons who by their vocation have the
mission of supporting the poor, together with all consecrated persons and all
associations, movements and volunteers everywhere, to help make this World Day
of the Poor a tradition that concretely contributes to evangelization in
today’s world.
This new World Day, therefore, should become a powerful appeal to our
consciences as believers, allowing us to grow in the conviction that sharing
with the poor enables us to understand the deepest truth of the Gospel.
The poor are not a problem: they are a resource from which to draw as we strive
to accept and practise in our lives the essence of the Gospel.
From the Vatican, 13 June 2017
Memorial of Saint Anthony of Padua
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