Cardinal Tobin: Jesus, a poor Messiah who loves the poor

My dear sisters and brothers in Christ,

If you haven’t yet read the recently published Apostolic Exhortation Dilexi Te, On Love for the Poor, a selection is provided below. However, I strongly encourage you to read the full text at: www.vatican.va

I love this letter because of its powerful content, but I also love it because it is a perfect blend of the pastoral heart and the profound teaching of the late Pope Francis, who initiated this project, and our new Holy Father, Pope Leo XIV, who completed it. These two great pastors speak here with one voice, and what they tell us is important: God’s only Son, our Redeemer, became poor in order to love and serve the poor. And those of us who have committed to following Jesus, the poor Messiah, have an obligation in love to respect and serve the poor as he did.

According to Dilexi Te:

The Gospel shows us that poverty marked every aspect of Jesus’ life. From the moment he entered the world, Jesus knew the bitter experience of rejection. The Evangelist Luke tells how Joseph and Mary, who was about to give birth, arrived in Bethlehem, and then adds, poignantly, that “there was no place for them in the inn” (Lk 2:7). Jesus was born in humble surroundings and laid in a manger; then, to save him from being killed, they fled to Egypt (cf. Mt 2:13-15). At the dawn of his public ministry, after announcing in the synagogue of Nazareth that the year of grace which would bring joy to the poor was fulfilled in him, he was driven out of town (cf. Lk 4:14-30). He died as an outcast, led out of Jerusalem to be crucified (cf. Mk 15:22). Indeed, that is how Jesus’ poverty is best described: he experienced the same exclusion that is the lot of the poor, the outcast of society.

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