An Advent Letter from the Pastor, Inspired by the themes of Dilexi Te
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November 30, 2025Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
There are moments in the life of the Church when we must stop and look honestly at the world around us and at our own hearts and ask whether our lives are aligned with the Gospel we profess. The season of Advent is one of those moments. The voices of the poor grow louder, not because they suddenly appeared, but because our society has become skilled at drowning them out. Yet Christ never stopped speaking through them.
Pope Leo XIV’s apostolic exhortation, Dilexi Te, is an invitation to conversion, not to guilt; to clarity, not to despair; to hope grounded in action; and to a spirituality rooted in the very heart of Christianity: God entered our humanity in poverty, and we encounter Christ in the dignity of the poor.
The Poverty of God and the Dignity of the Poor
The entire Christian story begins with a shock: God enters the world not through the gates of power but through the doorway of poverty. The eternal Son of God chose a manger instead of a throne, refugee flight instead of royal protection, manual labor instead of privilege, the company of outcasts instead of applause.
This was not an accident of history. It was a revelation.
It means that whenever we come near the poor, the vulnerable, the forgotten, we are standing on holy ground. Their dignity is not a sentimental idea; it is a theological truth. God has made the poor bearers of his presence. As the Pope writes, we do not simply help the poor—we encounter Christ through them.
To overlook the poor is therefore never simply a social failure; it is a spiritual one. It means turning our eyes away from Christ, who asks us—as he asked the disciples—“Do you see me?”
The Structural Roots of Poverty
Scripture speaks of widows, orphans, and strangers not only because they lacked money but because they lacked protection in a world built around the powerful. That lesson is still true.
The Holy Father points out that today, poverty is too often explained away as the result of personal choices alone. But the deeper truth, he says, is that poverty is frequently created and sustained by structures—political, economic, and social—that trap people no matter how hard they work.
Leo argues that these structures do not emerge by accident. They reflect the collective decisions of a society that prizes profit over people and efficiency over compassion. They reward those already secure and punish those already vulnerable. They normalize a way of life where it seems acceptable—and sometimes even “reasonable”—to leave whole communities behind.
A Culture that Breeds Indifference
While reading this Apostolic Exhortation, we should reflect on how our society has developed a subtle talent for teaching indifference. We scroll past suffering, muttering, “That’s not my problem.” We divide into tribes and lose sympathy for those outside them. We glorify success, mobility, and self-made myths, forgetting that many are denied even the chance to begin.
This should alarm us. When indifference reigns, inequality feels normal. When inequality feels normal, neglect becomes justified. And when neglect becomes justified, the poor become invisible.
This is precisely what the Gospel challenges. Jesus does not ask us merely to be kind to individuals; He calls us to transform the very relationships and systems that shape our common life. He calls us to become a people capable of compassion—not as a momentary emotion, but as a pattern of living.
The Spiritual Conversion We Need
The Pope calls us to spiritual conversion. We cannot address the structures of poverty unless we first confront the structures within our own hearts. The Gospel demands a spirituality of seeing the poor, listening to the poor, learning from the poor, and loving the poor. This is not romanticism. The poor are not symbolic props. They are subjects of their own stories, bearers of their own wisdom, witnesses to the God who still chooses what the world calls weak to shame the strong.
What This Means for Us as a Parish
As your pastor, I am calling this parish not to create another program, but to become a different kind of community. I am calling us to become a parish shaped by the Gospel, which stands against the loneliness, fragmentation, and inequality that mark modern life. I am calling us to become a place where the poor are not served from a distance but welcomed as family, where the structures of parish life reflect simplicity, hospitality, and mercy, where our worship forms us in Catholic social thought and Church teaching, and where our ministries are shaped by listening, not presumption.
Our Hope is Rooted in the Incarnation
We are not asked to fix the world by our own power. We are asked to reveal Christ’s presence—already at work among the poor, already lifting up the lowly, already setting captives free. Our task is to make room for Christ by acknowledging the dignity of the poor. We are called to be a light in darkness, a sign of God’s kingdom breaking into our broken world.
Christ in Disguise
With pastoral love in Christ,
Fr. Matthew Hawkins
Pastor of St. Benedict the Moor Parish