“Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you, and it will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure for the last days. Listen! The wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter” (James 5:3-5).
Pope Leo XIV includes this passage in his new Apostolic Exhortation Dilexi Te (§30), reminding us of the harsh words that Scripture has for those who live large. Those of us in comfortable environments (say, pecking away at a laptop on a couch) may need a wakeup call: “In fact, the illusion of happiness derived from a comfortable life pushes many people towards a vision of life centered on the accumulation of wealth and social success at all costs, even at the expense of others and by taking advantage of unjust social ideals and political-economic systems that favor the strongest” (§11).
There is a healthy critique of modern society throughout Dilexi Te, but it is not all admonition. Leo shares the heritage of the care for the poor that the Church has inherited, and urges readers toward the contributions toward a just society that are uniquely theirs to make.
There is no shortage of Bible passages which show that Jesus was poor and loved the poor, that God chooses the poor, that we will be judged by our care for the poor and that we neglect the poor at our peril, and the first section of Dilexi Te replays some of the highlights. Leo also recaps care for the poor throughout history, demonstrating the ways that believers expressed their faith and love in many times and places.
These examples illustrate the many ways to live the Gospel: Care for the sick and imprisoned; solidarity with and education for the poor; accompaniment of migrants; liberation of slaves, captives and the oppressed. The examples are plentiful, both familiar and less known. It’s as if he’s saying “think you can’t love the poor because of when and where you are living, or how you feel drawn to do it? Think again. There are as many ways to love as there are people.”
The avenues for remediation he urges us toward are nearly as diverse as the examples he gives: end inequality. Don’t let the market run societies at the expense of humanity. Help people find jobs. Fix unjust structures. Give alms. Pay attention to those who are ignored. Don’t believe that the poor are undeserving. Ensure all neighborhoods are beautiful. Care for the environment.
And don’t think you have it all figured out: “Lives can actually be turned around by the realization that the poor have much to teach us about the Gospel and its demands… The poor… remind us how baseless is the attitude of aggressive arrogance with which we frequently confront life’s difficulties. They remind us how uncertain and empty our seemingly safe and secure lives may be” (§109).
Leo includes a survey of Catholic Social Teaching on care for the poor, which I expected. I was truly struck, however, by one reference to “a document that was not initially well received by everyone,” (§98) then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s 1984 Instruction on Certain Aspects of the “Theology of Liberation” which criticized liberation theology. I suspect the overlap between people who love liberation theology and love Dilexi Te is vast. By including a document that would be categorized with the ideological right (if one were to erroneously appeal to those categories!), Leo subtly reminds us all that there’s no place for such division in the life of faith.
Nor should this rejection of division be a surprise: “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.” (§120) This challenge is intense, but it brings to mind our own dignity, and the lives of love, service, and sacrifice of which we are capable and to which we are called.
Dilexi Te doesn’t shrink from telling us that many of us are too comfortable, and deluded in our beliefs that inequality is just. But it also tells us that we are made to transcend selfishness and the status quo, growing our hearts in the Imitation of Christ until they are so big that we cannot fail to act on the love that enflames us.
Public Domain image by Freddie Everett, US. State Department.
