"I Have Loved You": Reflections Based on the Apostolic Exhortation of Pope Leo XIV
There are words that require no commentary. You can only hear them and let them remain. This is how Pope Leo XIV's exhortation Dilexi te begins: with a sentence from the Apocalypse that sounds like God's whisper addressed to the Church: "I have loved you" (Rev 3:9).
The Pope chooses no slogan and constructs no new thesis. He takes one sentence and allows it to become the light for the entire document. These words, spoken by the Risen One to the Church in Philadelphia, are still alive. In them is contained everything that God desires to say to every human being. (Dilexi te, 1) This is not an echo of the past; it is the beginning of everything. God's love is not a memory, but a movement that still continues. In this sense, Dilexi te is a document about the present tense of God.
Leo XIV deliberately places his teaching within the continuity begun by his predecessor. In a footnote to the introduction, we read that he continues what his predecessor began in Dilexit nos: a meditation on the love that makes us brothers. (Dilexi te, 2) This is very much in the Franciscan spirit: not to start from the beginning, but to continue love. It is worth noting that the tone of the whole exhortation differs from that of many earlier papal documents. We will not find sharp diagnoses here, but rather an invitation to silence and presence. The Pope does not say that "we must love more", but that God's love has already embraced us. And that is a fundamental difference.
And here the space of personal reflection begins. How often do we expect God to love us "better"? To prove that He exists, that He remembers, that He answers? And He simply says: "I have loved you." Without arguments. Without conditions. Without footnotes. This sentence needs no interpreter. One only needs the courage to hear it as if it were spoken today. Spoken precisely to me.
A few indispensable words
In papal documents one comes across passages that no longer sound like teaching, but like prayer. This is exactly how the first chapter of Dilexi te begins. Leo XIV does not write like a lecturer explaining a theory of poverty. He writes like someone who has himself sat down facing another person and remains silent for a moment before beginning to speak. As if he knew that in this silence, before the word appears, love has already begun.
In one of the first sentences, the Pope reminds us that poverty does not have one face. The poverty of those who lack the means to live, of those who are socially excluded; moral, spiritual, cultural poverty, and alongside them many new forms of poverty, more subtle and dangerous. (Dilexi te, 9–10) I read these words and have the impression that this is not a diagnosis of the world, but a description of our daily encounters. For next to the one who asks for bread stands someone who asks for meaning. Next to the one who has nowhere to sleep stands someone who has no one to tell about their day. Poverty has as many shades as there are people carrying emptiness within them. And when the Pope speaks of spiritual and cultural poverty, he does not accuse the world; he calls us to attentiveness: so that we do not pass by a person who has everything except hope.
Immediately afterwards, Leo XIV recalls a scene from the Gospel that has smelled of tenderness for centuries. He writes: "The disciples of Jesus criticised the woman who poured very costly fragrant oil on His head: 'Why this waste? It could have been sold at a high price and given to the poor.' But the Lord said to them: 'The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have Me' (Mt 26:8-9.11)." And he adds: "It was, of course, a modest gesture, but the one who suffers knows how great even a small gesture of tenderness is and how immense a relief it can bring. Jesus understands this and sanctions its permanence: 'Wherever this Gospel is proclaimed throughout the whole world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her' (Mt 26:13)." (Dilexi te, 4) I lingered over this passage longer than usual. For in a world that counts and compares, a woman with a flask of oil is simply wasting something. But Jesus does not count. He literally smells. He smells the fragrance of gratitude, of tears, of courage. And He says that it is precisely this fragrance that will endure through the ages. Perhaps this is why the Pope reminds us that the Gospel does not begin with great deeds, but with small things that no one measures. With gestures that smell of the heart. In a world afraid of being moved, God still remembers the scent of that oil.
After this gentleness comes a sentence sharp as glass: "The poor do not exist by chance or through blind and bitter fate. And certainly, for most of them, poverty is not a choice. There are still those, however, who dare to claim so, showing blindness and cruelty." (Dilexi te, 14) Leo XIV speaks of those who still believe that the poor are themselves to blame for their fate. As if the Gospel were a reward for the resourceful. As if grace had a price list. This moment in the document is like a breaking of the silence. As if the Pope wanted to say: let us stop explaining the world to ourselves in categories of merit, because if you believe that someone is less loved by God only because they have nothing, it means you have never truly understood what grace is.
I remembered the face of a man who once came to the sacristy only for a conversation. He did not want money, he did not want anything material; he wanted me simply to talk with him. And I understood then that you can give someone bread and still leave them hungry, if you do not share your attention with them. This is exactly what the Pope is saying: that poverty does not disappear through aid, if the aid is not followed by an encounter.
The first chapter of Dilexi te ends with the reminder that God is present in small things: in a gesture, in a glance, in a quiet "I am here". The Pope does not demand a revolution from us. He asks for gentleness. Because the Gospel is not born in clamour, but in hands that are not afraid to touch poverty. And perhaps that is why he named this chapter so simply: "A few indispensable words". Because truly little is needed to understand love. It is enough to let yourself be moved by what is small.
The choice of the poor
It is moving how Pope Leo XIV can write about God not as an idea, but as someone who truly enters human poverty. In Dilexi te he says: "God is merciful love, and His plan of love (…) consists above all in this, that He descended and came among us, to free us from slavery, fear, sin, and the power of death" (Dilexi te, 16). Not from afar, not from on high, but among us. Like One who is not afraid to touch the dust of the world. This passage is a description of God's gaze: not from above, but from His knees, from ground level, where man is most true. It is precisely there, says the Pope, that God "bends down over our poverty" (Dilexi te, 16).
This word, bends down, has something extraordinary in it. There is no haste in it, no pity. There is patience. There is a care that knows the weight of another's sorrow. For if God bends down, it means He is not ashamed of our fragility. That He did not come to judge us, but to be with us as close as He possibly can. "He himself became poor," writes Leo XIV, "he was born in the flesh like us, and we came to know Him in the smallness of a child laid in a manger" (Dilexi te, 16). This one sentence is enough for the whole Gospel to take on the scent of straw and the quiet breath of a Child who came not to rule, but to love.
I do not know whether this can be understood other than with the heart: God chose poverty not because it was romantic, but because only in it can one love without masks. "In the heart of God there is a preferential place for the poor," the Pope reminds us (Dilexi te, 17). And every time I read this sentence, I feel that it speaks not only of economics. It speaks of a spiritual geography: of the fact that God always chooses what is wounded, abandoned, forgotten.
For it is precisely there that the most truth is found. And perhaps that is why, when St Luke says in the Gospel: "There was no place for them in the inn" (Dilexi te, 19), he is in a sense making a diagnosis of the world. Because there is still no room for the One who possesses nothing yet brings everything. The Pope writes that Jesus "emptied himself, taking the form of a servant" (Dilexi te, 18). This one sentence should stop everyone who wants to speak of power, of greatness, of importance. For if God truly emptied Himself of divinity in order to be one of us, it means that no road leads to Him other than through humility.
Christ had nothing, not even the certainty of a roof over His head: "Foxes have dens and the birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head" (Dilexi te, 20). In this homelessness there is something deeply divine, as if He wanted to tell us that man is at home only when he can be a guest in the world. It astonishes me how the Pope moves from descriptions of the Gospel to the reality of the Church. He writes: "The Church, if it wants to be Christ's, must be the Church of the Beatitudes, a Church that makes room for the little ones and walks poor with the poor" (Dilexi te, 21). You can feel that he says this like someone pointing out a road he has walked himself. For the Church is not most true when it shines, but when it can kneel beside someone who has fallen. Not much is needed to understand this. It is enough to remember what a room smells like in which someone has finally been heard. Jesus never separated faith from tenderness. He did not ask whether someone deserved, only whether someone suffered. That is why He could say: "God makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good" (Dilexi te, 22). For God's love is scandalously unequal, in the sense that it always bends down lower.
"Whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me" (Dilexi te, 26). I do not know whether a more pointed summary of Christianity exists. It does not ask about doctrine, about convictions, about emotions. It asks: what did you do? Whom did you notice, whom did you allow to feel that they are not alone? Leo XIV also adds something that moves me, as a priest, by its simplicity: "Invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they have no way to repay you" (Dilexi te, 27). For in a world that calculates everything, God speaks of a happiness that costs nothing and yet changes everything. Of the happiness of presence, of selflessness, of closeness. And perhaps that is why the Pope reminds us: "God loves a cheerful giver" (33). Not the one who gives because it is proper, but the one who gives because he has already understood that only this truly remains.
"The life of the first ecclesial communities is given to us as an example to follow" (Dilexi te, 34). In these words I see a Church that breathes simplicity. Without strategies, without institutional weight, with one certainty: that you cannot love God if you do not love man. For this is not only about God's choice. It is about the choice each of us faces: whether we want to look at the world from above, or from the level of a love that bends down.
A Church for the poor
The chapter on the Church for the poor in Dilexi te is somewhat like a history of the Church of the poor. "Oh, how much I would like a Church that is poor and for the poor!" (Dilexi te, 35). This points to the memory that the Church was never most true when it had influence and budgets, but when it knew how to kneel beside someone who had nothing. The Pope reminds us that "there exists an inseparable bond between our faith and the poor" (Dilexi te, 36), and therefore one cannot speak of God without bending down over man. Otherwise the Gospel becomes only a theory, a sermon without an addressee.
The first communities understood this without theological treatises. They knew that the Eucharist ends only when someone has fed the widow and taken in the orphan. The institution of the deacons was not a reorganisation, but a decision of the heart. "It is not right for us to neglect the word of God in order to serve at tables" (Acts 6:2). Love poured out from the altar onto the streets. It was from this care for the last that the first martyrdom grew. Stephen, a deacon, died not because he proclaimed theories, but because he reminded people that God listens to the cry of the poor. Lawrence, when the wealth of the Church was demanded of him, pointed to the poor and said: "These are the treasures of the Church" (Dilexi te, 38). In that one sentence he contained the whole theology of the poor. Ambrose would later add that if someone turns the goods of the Church to his own advantage, it is a crime, and if he shares them with the poor, it is an act of mercy (Dilexi te, 38). This is a reminder that wealth in the hands of a disciple of Christ is always only an instrument of love.
Further on, the Fathers of the Church teach us a language in which every sentence becomes a call to closeness. Ignatius of Antioch reproaches spiritual people for no longer caring for "widows, orphans, the afflicted, and prisoners" (Dilexi te, 39). Polycarp calls for priests to be "full of compassion", because one cannot proclaim the Gospel without having pity within. Justin describes a liturgy in which prayer does not end with the sign of peace. "Those who are well off give what they wish, and everything is placed in the hands of the presider. He then extends his care over orphans, widows, the sick, and prisoners" (Dilexi te, 40). This is an image of a Church in which the gift of the altar becomes bread. Chrysostom says it without poetry: "Do you wish to honour the Body of Christ? Do not allow it to be naked. First feed the hungry, and then adorn the altar" (Dilexi te, 41). His words do not age, because there will always be the temptation to care first for the beauty of the church, and only then for the person sitting in front of it.
The mercy of which the Fathers write is not an appendix to faith. It is its fire. Ambrose emphasises: "You are not giving to the poor man from what is yours, but returning to him what is his own" (Dilexi te, 43). Augustine goes further: if you truly have Christ within you, you will lend bread even to a stranger, and the One who receives says: "I received earth, I will give heaven" (Dilexi te, 45). This is a logic the world will not understand until it sees what the joy of a person who shares with love looks like.
From this logic, concreteness is born. In times of plague, St Cyprian examines hearts: whether the healthy serve the sick, whether masters have compassion for their servants (Dilexi te, 49). Many centuries later, John of God and Camillus de Lellis teach the Church to nurse with tenderness. Camillus wrote to his confreres: "Above all, let each one ask the Lord for the grace of a mother's feeling towards his neighbour" (Dilexi te, 50). Nothing resembles God so much as a person who bends down with tenderness. In the same spirit, congregations are born in which women stand at the bedsides of the sick, beside children, beside the dying. The Sisters of Mercy, the Ursulines, the Daughters of Charity: all of them teach that touch can be prayer.
The monks, in turn, show that silence and service are two names of the same love. Basil said that one should work so that "God may through us give to the weak brothers what is necessary for them" (Dilexi te, 53). Around the monasteries, whole cities of mercy grew up. Benedict wrote in his rule a simple but concrete sentence: "Let special care accompany the reception of the poor and of pilgrims" (Dilexi te, 55). This hospitality becomes one of the pillars of Europe. From it grows a culture in which work, knowledge, and prayer are woven into one: everything has meaning only when it leads to service.
In the same light one must read the Christian struggle for freedom. Jesus came "to proclaim liberty to captives" (Lk 4:18), and the Church understood that this is not a metaphor. The Trinitarians and the Mercedarians were ready to give their own lives for those they ransomed (Dilexi te, 60–61). In their ministry, the words of the Gospel are visible literally: "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends" (Jn 15:13). And this is not a story from the past. Not long ago, visiting prisons, Pope Francis kept repeating that they are "a place of great humanity" (Dilexi te, 62). These words are still needed, because they remind us that no one is reduced to their guilt.
Then the Pope carries us to the thirteenth century, when the spirit of poverty renewed the Church. Francis of Assisi asks the brothers "to acquire nothing as their own… for the Lord became poor for us" (Dilexi te, 64). Clare defends the privilege of poverty; Dominic teaches that truth should sound from the lips of simple people. Thomas of Celano will write of Francis that "he became a singular lover of the poor" (Dilexi te, 67). For Francis, poverty was freedom. The poor, meanwhile, were friends.
Another trace of this love is education. The Pope writes that "one cannot teach without love" (Dilexi te, 68). Calasanz founds the first free school for children from poor families (Dilexi te, 69). La Salle creates a community of teachers who teach not only writing, but humanity (Dilexi te, 69). Bosco, Champagnat, and Rosmini understand that education means touching the heart, that a young person does not need a sermon, but someone who believes in their worth. And the sisters, from the Ursulines to Notre Dame, open their doors to girls who could never study before (Dilexi te, 71). In these stories you can feel the Gospel becoming an alphabet of hope.
The same sensitivity leads the Church to migrants. Scalabrini and St Frances Cabrini build bridges, schools, hospitals; they create space for those who have been cast off the map of the world (Dilexi te, 74). Their spirit lives on in the four words of Pope Francis: "to welcome, to protect, to promote, and to integrate" (Dilexi te, 75). This is a concrete answer to the question of how to look at a human being. The Pope reminds us: "Every human being is a child of God. The image of Christ is imprinted in them" (Dilexi te, 75). In a world that classifies people according to usefulness, these words sound like a protest.
Finally, the Pope turns to the saints of our times. Mother Teresa says it most simply: "Our poor are wonderful people... they need our understanding love, so that we may treat them with dignity" (Dilexi te, 77). And she adds: "The fruit of silence is prayer, the fruit of prayer is faith, the fruit of faith is love, the fruit of love is service, and the fruit of service is peace" (Dilexi te, 77). Sister Dulce of Bahia began in a chicken coop and ended as a sign of the tenderness that can change structures (Dilexi te, 78). Her story, like many others, shows that holiness is not detachment from the world, but a touching of its wounds. "The fabric of a community of all and for all": this is how Leo XIV addresses the members of movements, communities, and associations working with the poor. (Dilexi te, 80) It is they who remind the Church that solidarity means fighting for justice. Their commitment is "a struggle against the structural causes of poverty, inequality, the lack of employment, land, and housing" (Dilexi te, 81). And the Pope warns: when institutions stop listening to the people, "democracy atrophies, loses its representativeness, becomes detached from reality" (Dilexi te, 81). And the Church too can fall ill with this, if it forgets that its voice sounds true only when it speaks together with the poor.
The Pope uncovers the pulse of history. For in every epoch the same moment returns: someone sees a person in need and responds. And from that moment the Church becomes itself again. For its true wealth lies not in archives or in marble, but in the hands that wash, feed, teach, and bless. Wherever there is a person who has bent down, there the Gospel is still happening.
A history that continues
The living history begins already with the words: "reality is better seen from the peripheries, and the poor are subjects with a specific intelligence, indispensable for the Church and for humanity" (Dilexi te, 82). I was reminded of an elderly lady (a pensioner, I think) from Kraków who came every week to the Brother Albert kitchen to bring bread for someone "who has it worse". She did not analyse structures of sin, she did not know economic terms, but she looked with her heart. And it is precisely from such looking that the Church is born. The Pope writes that "one cannot imagine a rereading of Christian Revelation without lay Christians grappling with the challenges of their times" (Dilexi te, 82). Praise of the everyday. For true theology often happens not in libraries, but on buses, in factories, on hospital wards. It is there that faith meets a reality that cannot be captured in a footnote. Just as in the story above.
The history of the Church's social teaching is a series of attempts to understand man. In 1891, Leo XIII in Rerum novarum dared to stand on the side of the workers, "exposing the unacceptable situation of many" (Dilexi te, 83). And a hundred years later, John XXIII, in Mater et Magistra, reminded the world that "wealthy countries cannot remain indifferent towards countries afflicted by hunger and misery" (Dilexi te, 83). In both cases it was about the heart. Then came the Second Vatican Council. And then these words were spoken: "The Church shows itself as it is and as it wishes to be: as the Church of all, and especially the Church of the poor" (Dilexi te, 84). Cardinal Lercaro would even say that this is "the only question of the entire Second Vatican Council" (Dilexi te, 84). John XXIII not only opened the windows of the Church, but also the doors, so that those who had until then been kept out could enter.
St Paul VI would add with simplicity that "the poor man is a representative of Christ… The poor man and Peter can coincide, can be the same person, clothed in the double personification of poverty and authority" (Dilexi te, 85). From then on, it is not enough to speak about God. One must recognise Him in someone waiting for help in a shelter, in prison, at a railway station. The Second Vatican Council notes that "God destined the earth, with everything it contains, for the use of all people and nations" (Dilexi te, 86). Sadly, this speaks of a world that still forgets that property without love becomes harm. Paul VI in Populorum progressio adds: "No one may consider himself entitled to keep surplus goods solely for private benefit" (Dilexi te, 86). A person who keeps everything for himself is ultimately left alone.
John Paul II, as if wanting to enclose this story of the poor in one sentence, writes of "a special form of primacy in the practice of Christian love" (Dilexi te, 87). And he warns that "failing to notice them would mean becoming like the rich gourmet who pretended not to see Lazarus" (Dilexi te, 87). If we do not see the poor, it means our Gospel has lost its sight. His successor, Benedict XVI, emphasises that "we love our neighbour all the more effectively, the more we commit ourselves to the common good" (Dilexi te, 88). And then he adds that hunger and misery are not only a lack of material resources, but also "a lack of institutional structures capable of ensuring just access to food and water" (Dilexi te, 89). This sentence is addressed firmly to politicians, so that they may have the courage to treat causes, not only effects. Pope Francis, in turn, reminds us that the voice of the Church is also the voice of episcopates and local communities. At Medellín, the bishops of Latin America called by name the things we often wrap in cotton wool: "The poverty of so many brothers cries out for justice, solidarity, and witness" (Dilexi te, 90). And at Puebla it was added that structures of injustice are "social sin" (Dilexi te, 90). Theology ceases to be observation and becomes movement.
And again that wonderful word returns: mercy. "Mercy is a force that changes reality" (Dilexi te, 91). The Pope wants "the number of politicians capable of authentic dialogue aimed at effectively healing the roots to grow" (Dilexi te, 91). For "the dictatorship of an economy that kills" is the daily reality of people who work and still cannot make a living (Dilexi te, 92). "The lack of justice is the root of social diseases" (Dilexi te, 94). And further: "We often find that human rights are not equal for all" (Dilexi te, 94). It would be hard to find a more accurate diagnosis of social problems. It is enough to listen to the conversations in the waiting rooms of a social welfare office to see that these words do not belong to history, for this is our time.
The author of the Exhortation also writes of cities that "have overcome unhealthy distrust and integrate those who are different" (Dilexi te, 96). Reading this, I think of parishes in which the pews in church still divide people more than they unite them. And yet "the degradation of the environment and the degradation of society inflict particular harm on the weakest" (Dilexi te, 96). A city, or even a parish, that is not for everyone ceases to be human. The Pope ends forcefully: the Gospel is not only a private relationship with the Lord. "The proposal is broader: it is about the Kingdom of God… To the extent that He is able to reign among us, social life will become a space of fraternity, justice, and peace" (Dilexi te, 97).
"Only closeness, which makes us friends, allows us to deeply appreciate the values of today's poor" (Dilexi te, 100). This is precisely a school of seeing. Only when we sit down beside them will we hear how God speaks with their voice. "This loving attention is the beginning of true concern for their person" (Dilexi te, 101). A gaze full of wonder discovers in the poor the reflection of God's face. Therefore: "let us allow ourselves to be evangelised by the poor" (Dilexi te, 102). For they know the secret of simplicity, gratitude, and trust, which we, in our abundance, have forgotten. The history of the poor truly continues… In the hands of those who still have less, and yet know how to give more.
A constant challenge
Pope Leo XIV writes about people who keep bending down: over the sick, over a child, over someone who has lost hope. He reminds us that "care for the poor is part of the great Tradition of the Church, like a sheaf of light which, from the beginnings of the Gospel, has illuminated the hearts and steps of Christians of all times" (Dilexi te, 103). In every epoch the Church lost its way when it turned its eyes away from the poor, and found itself again when it returned to them. The Pope goes on to write that "love for the poor, regardless of the form in which this poverty manifests itself, is the evangelical guarantee of a Church faithful to the heart of God" (Dilexi te, 103). I think here of the many people in parishes who make no noise about themselves, and yet are like the quiet pillars of the community: the woman who bakes bread for her neighbours; the man who always carries the shopping for an elderly lady; the altar server who quietly sets aside coins from his pocket money for some mission. It is precisely in such gestures that the Church is most itself.
The Holy Father also reminds us that for Christians the poor are not "a social problem, but a family matter" (Dilexi te, 104). How often in the Church do we say "them" about the poor, and not "us"? How often do we divide the world into those who help and those who are helped, forgetting that in God's plan this is one family, only with different roles? The Pope encourages us to "spend hours, weeks, or years of life with them" (Dilexi te, 104) and reminds us that Jesus did nothing else: He simply was with people. He did not overlook them. Just as in the parable of the Good Samaritan. "We have developed in many respects, but we are illiterate in accompanying, caring for, and supporting the weakest" (Dilexi te, 105). Can one be civilised and at the same time blind to the person lying nearby? The parable returns with new force. Every day I pass by someone who is, for me, that "wounded one by the roadside".
Elsewhere the Pope writes: "When I meet a person sleeping outside on a cold night, I can react by setting out from faith and love, recognising in this person a creature infinitely loved by the Father" (Dilexi te, 106). And he adds a question: "can holiness be understood without this living recognition of the dignity of every human being?" (Dilexi te, 106). It is precisely here that Dilexi te touches the core: holiness is not detached from tenderness. Finally, "we find Lazarus every day, if we look for him," wrote Gregory the Great (Dilexi te, 108). Not somewhere far away, but in our neighbourhood, in a conversation, at a school desk, in the family. Therefore: "do not waste the time of mercy, do not hide what you have received" (Dilexi te, 108). Do not wait until you are ready, until everything falls into place. Love is always now.
The poor do not only need us. We need them. It is they who teach us. "It is precisely the poor who evangelise us" (Dilexi te, 109). Their silence unmasks our anxiety. Their fragility reminds us that our security is an illusion. And their gaze, simple, without irony, teaches a humility that cannot be read in books. "For Christians the poor are not a sociological category, but the very body of Christ" (Dilexi te, 110), writes Leo XIV, and before my eyes I have the face of a sick woman to whom I brought Communion in the Provincial Hospital in Bielsko, where I served as a holiday replacement. When she received the Host, she said quietly: "At last I am not alone."
Further on comes a warning: "Every community that does not intend to cooperate creatively and effectively so that the poor may live with dignity will expose itself to the risk of decay" (Dilexi te, 113). Strong words. But perhaps necessary. For nothing destroys the Church like indifference in beautiful robes. "The worst discrimination the poor experience is the lack of spiritual care" (Dilexi te, 114). We often think they need only bread and work, while sometimes what they need most is hope. They need someone who will not only help them, but pray for them. Sit down and talk with them. But to do this, one must know how to offer it. A familiar word, is it not? Almsgiving. "It is not an outdated gesture, but an indispensable stage of encounter" (Dilexi te, 115). In a world where everything can be transferred to an account, almsgiving has meaning only when it requires touch, a look in the eyes, a brief "good morning", a smile that costs something. Leo XIV quotes St John Chrysostom: "Almsgiving is the wing of prayer. If you do not add the wing, your prayer will barely rise" (Dilexi te, 118). Prayer without a gesture stops at the lips.
"Let the poor person feel that the words of Jesus, 'I have loved you' (Rev 3:9), are addressed precisely to them" (Dilexi te, 121). If we truly want to be the Church of Jesus, we must learn one thing: that a person who comes to us cold, hungry, wounded, should hear in us not moralising, but one sentence that changes everything: "I have loved you."
Fr Adam Płonka
Bibliography:
The Pope chooses no slogan and constructs no new thesis. He takes one sentence and allows it to become the light for the entire document. These words, spoken by the Risen One to the Church in Philadelphia, are still alive. In them is contained everything that God desires to say to every human being. (Dilexi te, 1) This is not an echo of the past; it is the beginning of everything. God's love is not a memory, but a movement that still continues. In this sense, Dilexi te is a document about the present tense of God.
Leo XIV deliberately places his teaching within the continuity begun by his predecessor. In a footnote to the introduction, we read that he continues what his predecessor began in Dilexit nos: a meditation on the love that makes us brothers. (Dilexi te, 2) This is very much in the Franciscan spirit: not to start from the beginning, but to continue love. It is worth noting that the tone of the whole exhortation differs from that of many earlier papal documents. We will not find sharp diagnoses here, but rather an invitation to silence and presence. The Pope does not say that "we must love more", but that God's love has already embraced us. And that is a fundamental difference.
And here the space of personal reflection begins. How often do we expect God to love us "better"? To prove that He exists, that He remembers, that He answers? And He simply says: "I have loved you." Without arguments. Without conditions. Without footnotes. This sentence needs no interpreter. One only needs the courage to hear it as if it were spoken today. Spoken precisely to me.
A few indispensable words
In papal documents one comes across passages that no longer sound like teaching, but like prayer. This is exactly how the first chapter of Dilexi te begins. Leo XIV does not write like a lecturer explaining a theory of poverty. He writes like someone who has himself sat down facing another person and remains silent for a moment before beginning to speak. As if he knew that in this silence, before the word appears, love has already begun.
In one of the first sentences, the Pope reminds us that poverty does not have one face. The poverty of those who lack the means to live, of those who are socially excluded; moral, spiritual, cultural poverty, and alongside them many new forms of poverty, more subtle and dangerous. (Dilexi te, 9–10) I read these words and have the impression that this is not a diagnosis of the world, but a description of our daily encounters. For next to the one who asks for bread stands someone who asks for meaning. Next to the one who has nowhere to sleep stands someone who has no one to tell about their day. Poverty has as many shades as there are people carrying emptiness within them. And when the Pope speaks of spiritual and cultural poverty, he does not accuse the world; he calls us to attentiveness: so that we do not pass by a person who has everything except hope.
Immediately afterwards, Leo XIV recalls a scene from the Gospel that has smelled of tenderness for centuries. He writes: "The disciples of Jesus criticised the woman who poured very costly fragrant oil on His head: 'Why this waste? It could have been sold at a high price and given to the poor.' But the Lord said to them: 'The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have Me' (Mt 26:8-9.11)." And he adds: "It was, of course, a modest gesture, but the one who suffers knows how great even a small gesture of tenderness is and how immense a relief it can bring. Jesus understands this and sanctions its permanence: 'Wherever this Gospel is proclaimed throughout the whole world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her' (Mt 26:13)." (Dilexi te, 4) I lingered over this passage longer than usual. For in a world that counts and compares, a woman with a flask of oil is simply wasting something. But Jesus does not count. He literally smells. He smells the fragrance of gratitude, of tears, of courage. And He says that it is precisely this fragrance that will endure through the ages. Perhaps this is why the Pope reminds us that the Gospel does not begin with great deeds, but with small things that no one measures. With gestures that smell of the heart. In a world afraid of being moved, God still remembers the scent of that oil.
After this gentleness comes a sentence sharp as glass: "The poor do not exist by chance or through blind and bitter fate. And certainly, for most of them, poverty is not a choice. There are still those, however, who dare to claim so, showing blindness and cruelty." (Dilexi te, 14) Leo XIV speaks of those who still believe that the poor are themselves to blame for their fate. As if the Gospel were a reward for the resourceful. As if grace had a price list. This moment in the document is like a breaking of the silence. As if the Pope wanted to say: let us stop explaining the world to ourselves in categories of merit, because if you believe that someone is less loved by God only because they have nothing, it means you have never truly understood what grace is.
I remembered the face of a man who once came to the sacristy only for a conversation. He did not want money, he did not want anything material; he wanted me simply to talk with him. And I understood then that you can give someone bread and still leave them hungry, if you do not share your attention with them. This is exactly what the Pope is saying: that poverty does not disappear through aid, if the aid is not followed by an encounter.
The first chapter of Dilexi te ends with the reminder that God is present in small things: in a gesture, in a glance, in a quiet "I am here". The Pope does not demand a revolution from us. He asks for gentleness. Because the Gospel is not born in clamour, but in hands that are not afraid to touch poverty. And perhaps that is why he named this chapter so simply: "A few indispensable words". Because truly little is needed to understand love. It is enough to let yourself be moved by what is small.
The choice of the poor
It is moving how Pope Leo XIV can write about God not as an idea, but as someone who truly enters human poverty. In Dilexi te he says: "God is merciful love, and His plan of love (…) consists above all in this, that He descended and came among us, to free us from slavery, fear, sin, and the power of death" (Dilexi te, 16). Not from afar, not from on high, but among us. Like One who is not afraid to touch the dust of the world. This passage is a description of God's gaze: not from above, but from His knees, from ground level, where man is most true. It is precisely there, says the Pope, that God "bends down over our poverty" (Dilexi te, 16).
This word, bends down, has something extraordinary in it. There is no haste in it, no pity. There is patience. There is a care that knows the weight of another's sorrow. For if God bends down, it means He is not ashamed of our fragility. That He did not come to judge us, but to be with us as close as He possibly can. "He himself became poor," writes Leo XIV, "he was born in the flesh like us, and we came to know Him in the smallness of a child laid in a manger" (Dilexi te, 16). This one sentence is enough for the whole Gospel to take on the scent of straw and the quiet breath of a Child who came not to rule, but to love.
I do not know whether this can be understood other than with the heart: God chose poverty not because it was romantic, but because only in it can one love without masks. "In the heart of God there is a preferential place for the poor," the Pope reminds us (Dilexi te, 17). And every time I read this sentence, I feel that it speaks not only of economics. It speaks of a spiritual geography: of the fact that God always chooses what is wounded, abandoned, forgotten.
For it is precisely there that the most truth is found. And perhaps that is why, when St Luke says in the Gospel: "There was no place for them in the inn" (Dilexi te, 19), he is in a sense making a diagnosis of the world. Because there is still no room for the One who possesses nothing yet brings everything. The Pope writes that Jesus "emptied himself, taking the form of a servant" (Dilexi te, 18). This one sentence should stop everyone who wants to speak of power, of greatness, of importance. For if God truly emptied Himself of divinity in order to be one of us, it means that no road leads to Him other than through humility.
Christ had nothing, not even the certainty of a roof over His head: "Foxes have dens and the birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head" (Dilexi te, 20). In this homelessness there is something deeply divine, as if He wanted to tell us that man is at home only when he can be a guest in the world. It astonishes me how the Pope moves from descriptions of the Gospel to the reality of the Church. He writes: "The Church, if it wants to be Christ's, must be the Church of the Beatitudes, a Church that makes room for the little ones and walks poor with the poor" (Dilexi te, 21). You can feel that he says this like someone pointing out a road he has walked himself. For the Church is not most true when it shines, but when it can kneel beside someone who has fallen. Not much is needed to understand this. It is enough to remember what a room smells like in which someone has finally been heard. Jesus never separated faith from tenderness. He did not ask whether someone deserved, only whether someone suffered. That is why He could say: "God makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good" (Dilexi te, 22). For God's love is scandalously unequal, in the sense that it always bends down lower.
"Whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me" (Dilexi te, 26). I do not know whether a more pointed summary of Christianity exists. It does not ask about doctrine, about convictions, about emotions. It asks: what did you do? Whom did you notice, whom did you allow to feel that they are not alone? Leo XIV also adds something that moves me, as a priest, by its simplicity: "Invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they have no way to repay you" (Dilexi te, 27). For in a world that calculates everything, God speaks of a happiness that costs nothing and yet changes everything. Of the happiness of presence, of selflessness, of closeness. And perhaps that is why the Pope reminds us: "God loves a cheerful giver" (33). Not the one who gives because it is proper, but the one who gives because he has already understood that only this truly remains.
"The life of the first ecclesial communities is given to us as an example to follow" (Dilexi te, 34). In these words I see a Church that breathes simplicity. Without strategies, without institutional weight, with one certainty: that you cannot love God if you do not love man. For this is not only about God's choice. It is about the choice each of us faces: whether we want to look at the world from above, or from the level of a love that bends down.
A Church for the poor
The chapter on the Church for the poor in Dilexi te is somewhat like a history of the Church of the poor. "Oh, how much I would like a Church that is poor and for the poor!" (Dilexi te, 35). This points to the memory that the Church was never most true when it had influence and budgets, but when it knew how to kneel beside someone who had nothing. The Pope reminds us that "there exists an inseparable bond between our faith and the poor" (Dilexi te, 36), and therefore one cannot speak of God without bending down over man. Otherwise the Gospel becomes only a theory, a sermon without an addressee.
The first communities understood this without theological treatises. They knew that the Eucharist ends only when someone has fed the widow and taken in the orphan. The institution of the deacons was not a reorganisation, but a decision of the heart. "It is not right for us to neglect the word of God in order to serve at tables" (Acts 6:2). Love poured out from the altar onto the streets. It was from this care for the last that the first martyrdom grew. Stephen, a deacon, died not because he proclaimed theories, but because he reminded people that God listens to the cry of the poor. Lawrence, when the wealth of the Church was demanded of him, pointed to the poor and said: "These are the treasures of the Church" (Dilexi te, 38). In that one sentence he contained the whole theology of the poor. Ambrose would later add that if someone turns the goods of the Church to his own advantage, it is a crime, and if he shares them with the poor, it is an act of mercy (Dilexi te, 38). This is a reminder that wealth in the hands of a disciple of Christ is always only an instrument of love.
Further on, the Fathers of the Church teach us a language in which every sentence becomes a call to closeness. Ignatius of Antioch reproaches spiritual people for no longer caring for "widows, orphans, the afflicted, and prisoners" (Dilexi te, 39). Polycarp calls for priests to be "full of compassion", because one cannot proclaim the Gospel without having pity within. Justin describes a liturgy in which prayer does not end with the sign of peace. "Those who are well off give what they wish, and everything is placed in the hands of the presider. He then extends his care over orphans, widows, the sick, and prisoners" (Dilexi te, 40). This is an image of a Church in which the gift of the altar becomes bread. Chrysostom says it without poetry: "Do you wish to honour the Body of Christ? Do not allow it to be naked. First feed the hungry, and then adorn the altar" (Dilexi te, 41). His words do not age, because there will always be the temptation to care first for the beauty of the church, and only then for the person sitting in front of it.
The mercy of which the Fathers write is not an appendix to faith. It is its fire. Ambrose emphasises: "You are not giving to the poor man from what is yours, but returning to him what is his own" (Dilexi te, 43). Augustine goes further: if you truly have Christ within you, you will lend bread even to a stranger, and the One who receives says: "I received earth, I will give heaven" (Dilexi te, 45). This is a logic the world will not understand until it sees what the joy of a person who shares with love looks like.
From this logic, concreteness is born. In times of plague, St Cyprian examines hearts: whether the healthy serve the sick, whether masters have compassion for their servants (Dilexi te, 49). Many centuries later, John of God and Camillus de Lellis teach the Church to nurse with tenderness. Camillus wrote to his confreres: "Above all, let each one ask the Lord for the grace of a mother's feeling towards his neighbour" (Dilexi te, 50). Nothing resembles God so much as a person who bends down with tenderness. In the same spirit, congregations are born in which women stand at the bedsides of the sick, beside children, beside the dying. The Sisters of Mercy, the Ursulines, the Daughters of Charity: all of them teach that touch can be prayer.
The monks, in turn, show that silence and service are two names of the same love. Basil said that one should work so that "God may through us give to the weak brothers what is necessary for them" (Dilexi te, 53). Around the monasteries, whole cities of mercy grew up. Benedict wrote in his rule a simple but concrete sentence: "Let special care accompany the reception of the poor and of pilgrims" (Dilexi te, 55). This hospitality becomes one of the pillars of Europe. From it grows a culture in which work, knowledge, and prayer are woven into one: everything has meaning only when it leads to service.
In the same light one must read the Christian struggle for freedom. Jesus came "to proclaim liberty to captives" (Lk 4:18), and the Church understood that this is not a metaphor. The Trinitarians and the Mercedarians were ready to give their own lives for those they ransomed (Dilexi te, 60–61). In their ministry, the words of the Gospel are visible literally: "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends" (Jn 15:13). And this is not a story from the past. Not long ago, visiting prisons, Pope Francis kept repeating that they are "a place of great humanity" (Dilexi te, 62). These words are still needed, because they remind us that no one is reduced to their guilt.
Then the Pope carries us to the thirteenth century, when the spirit of poverty renewed the Church. Francis of Assisi asks the brothers "to acquire nothing as their own… for the Lord became poor for us" (Dilexi te, 64). Clare defends the privilege of poverty; Dominic teaches that truth should sound from the lips of simple people. Thomas of Celano will write of Francis that "he became a singular lover of the poor" (Dilexi te, 67). For Francis, poverty was freedom. The poor, meanwhile, were friends.
Another trace of this love is education. The Pope writes that "one cannot teach without love" (Dilexi te, 68). Calasanz founds the first free school for children from poor families (Dilexi te, 69). La Salle creates a community of teachers who teach not only writing, but humanity (Dilexi te, 69). Bosco, Champagnat, and Rosmini understand that education means touching the heart, that a young person does not need a sermon, but someone who believes in their worth. And the sisters, from the Ursulines to Notre Dame, open their doors to girls who could never study before (Dilexi te, 71). In these stories you can feel the Gospel becoming an alphabet of hope.
The same sensitivity leads the Church to migrants. Scalabrini and St Frances Cabrini build bridges, schools, hospitals; they create space for those who have been cast off the map of the world (Dilexi te, 74). Their spirit lives on in the four words of Pope Francis: "to welcome, to protect, to promote, and to integrate" (Dilexi te, 75). This is a concrete answer to the question of how to look at a human being. The Pope reminds us: "Every human being is a child of God. The image of Christ is imprinted in them" (Dilexi te, 75). In a world that classifies people according to usefulness, these words sound like a protest.
Finally, the Pope turns to the saints of our times. Mother Teresa says it most simply: "Our poor are wonderful people... they need our understanding love, so that we may treat them with dignity" (Dilexi te, 77). And she adds: "The fruit of silence is prayer, the fruit of prayer is faith, the fruit of faith is love, the fruit of love is service, and the fruit of service is peace" (Dilexi te, 77). Sister Dulce of Bahia began in a chicken coop and ended as a sign of the tenderness that can change structures (Dilexi te, 78). Her story, like many others, shows that holiness is not detachment from the world, but a touching of its wounds. "The fabric of a community of all and for all": this is how Leo XIV addresses the members of movements, communities, and associations working with the poor. (Dilexi te, 80) It is they who remind the Church that solidarity means fighting for justice. Their commitment is "a struggle against the structural causes of poverty, inequality, the lack of employment, land, and housing" (Dilexi te, 81). And the Pope warns: when institutions stop listening to the people, "democracy atrophies, loses its representativeness, becomes detached from reality" (Dilexi te, 81). And the Church too can fall ill with this, if it forgets that its voice sounds true only when it speaks together with the poor.
The Pope uncovers the pulse of history. For in every epoch the same moment returns: someone sees a person in need and responds. And from that moment the Church becomes itself again. For its true wealth lies not in archives or in marble, but in the hands that wash, feed, teach, and bless. Wherever there is a person who has bent down, there the Gospel is still happening.
A history that continues
The living history begins already with the words: "reality is better seen from the peripheries, and the poor are subjects with a specific intelligence, indispensable for the Church and for humanity" (Dilexi te, 82). I was reminded of an elderly lady (a pensioner, I think) from Kraków who came every week to the Brother Albert kitchen to bring bread for someone "who has it worse". She did not analyse structures of sin, she did not know economic terms, but she looked with her heart. And it is precisely from such looking that the Church is born. The Pope writes that "one cannot imagine a rereading of Christian Revelation without lay Christians grappling with the challenges of their times" (Dilexi te, 82). Praise of the everyday. For true theology often happens not in libraries, but on buses, in factories, on hospital wards. It is there that faith meets a reality that cannot be captured in a footnote. Just as in the story above.
The history of the Church's social teaching is a series of attempts to understand man. In 1891, Leo XIII in Rerum novarum dared to stand on the side of the workers, "exposing the unacceptable situation of many" (Dilexi te, 83). And a hundred years later, John XXIII, in Mater et Magistra, reminded the world that "wealthy countries cannot remain indifferent towards countries afflicted by hunger and misery" (Dilexi te, 83). In both cases it was about the heart. Then came the Second Vatican Council. And then these words were spoken: "The Church shows itself as it is and as it wishes to be: as the Church of all, and especially the Church of the poor" (Dilexi te, 84). Cardinal Lercaro would even say that this is "the only question of the entire Second Vatican Council" (Dilexi te, 84). John XXIII not only opened the windows of the Church, but also the doors, so that those who had until then been kept out could enter.
St Paul VI would add with simplicity that "the poor man is a representative of Christ… The poor man and Peter can coincide, can be the same person, clothed in the double personification of poverty and authority" (Dilexi te, 85). From then on, it is not enough to speak about God. One must recognise Him in someone waiting for help in a shelter, in prison, at a railway station. The Second Vatican Council notes that "God destined the earth, with everything it contains, for the use of all people and nations" (Dilexi te, 86). Sadly, this speaks of a world that still forgets that property without love becomes harm. Paul VI in Populorum progressio adds: "No one may consider himself entitled to keep surplus goods solely for private benefit" (Dilexi te, 86). A person who keeps everything for himself is ultimately left alone.
John Paul II, as if wanting to enclose this story of the poor in one sentence, writes of "a special form of primacy in the practice of Christian love" (Dilexi te, 87). And he warns that "failing to notice them would mean becoming like the rich gourmet who pretended not to see Lazarus" (Dilexi te, 87). If we do not see the poor, it means our Gospel has lost its sight. His successor, Benedict XVI, emphasises that "we love our neighbour all the more effectively, the more we commit ourselves to the common good" (Dilexi te, 88). And then he adds that hunger and misery are not only a lack of material resources, but also "a lack of institutional structures capable of ensuring just access to food and water" (Dilexi te, 89). This sentence is addressed firmly to politicians, so that they may have the courage to treat causes, not only effects. Pope Francis, in turn, reminds us that the voice of the Church is also the voice of episcopates and local communities. At Medellín, the bishops of Latin America called by name the things we often wrap in cotton wool: "The poverty of so many brothers cries out for justice, solidarity, and witness" (Dilexi te, 90). And at Puebla it was added that structures of injustice are "social sin" (Dilexi te, 90). Theology ceases to be observation and becomes movement.
And again that wonderful word returns: mercy. "Mercy is a force that changes reality" (Dilexi te, 91). The Pope wants "the number of politicians capable of authentic dialogue aimed at effectively healing the roots to grow" (Dilexi te, 91). For "the dictatorship of an economy that kills" is the daily reality of people who work and still cannot make a living (Dilexi te, 92). "The lack of justice is the root of social diseases" (Dilexi te, 94). And further: "We often find that human rights are not equal for all" (Dilexi te, 94). It would be hard to find a more accurate diagnosis of social problems. It is enough to listen to the conversations in the waiting rooms of a social welfare office to see that these words do not belong to history, for this is our time.
The author of the Exhortation also writes of cities that "have overcome unhealthy distrust and integrate those who are different" (Dilexi te, 96). Reading this, I think of parishes in which the pews in church still divide people more than they unite them. And yet "the degradation of the environment and the degradation of society inflict particular harm on the weakest" (Dilexi te, 96). A city, or even a parish, that is not for everyone ceases to be human. The Pope ends forcefully: the Gospel is not only a private relationship with the Lord. "The proposal is broader: it is about the Kingdom of God… To the extent that He is able to reign among us, social life will become a space of fraternity, justice, and peace" (Dilexi te, 97).
"Only closeness, which makes us friends, allows us to deeply appreciate the values of today's poor" (Dilexi te, 100). This is precisely a school of seeing. Only when we sit down beside them will we hear how God speaks with their voice. "This loving attention is the beginning of true concern for their person" (Dilexi te, 101). A gaze full of wonder discovers in the poor the reflection of God's face. Therefore: "let us allow ourselves to be evangelised by the poor" (Dilexi te, 102). For they know the secret of simplicity, gratitude, and trust, which we, in our abundance, have forgotten. The history of the poor truly continues… In the hands of those who still have less, and yet know how to give more.
A constant challenge
Pope Leo XIV writes about people who keep bending down: over the sick, over a child, over someone who has lost hope. He reminds us that "care for the poor is part of the great Tradition of the Church, like a sheaf of light which, from the beginnings of the Gospel, has illuminated the hearts and steps of Christians of all times" (Dilexi te, 103). In every epoch the Church lost its way when it turned its eyes away from the poor, and found itself again when it returned to them. The Pope goes on to write that "love for the poor, regardless of the form in which this poverty manifests itself, is the evangelical guarantee of a Church faithful to the heart of God" (Dilexi te, 103). I think here of the many people in parishes who make no noise about themselves, and yet are like the quiet pillars of the community: the woman who bakes bread for her neighbours; the man who always carries the shopping for an elderly lady; the altar server who quietly sets aside coins from his pocket money for some mission. It is precisely in such gestures that the Church is most itself.
The Holy Father also reminds us that for Christians the poor are not "a social problem, but a family matter" (Dilexi te, 104). How often in the Church do we say "them" about the poor, and not "us"? How often do we divide the world into those who help and those who are helped, forgetting that in God's plan this is one family, only with different roles? The Pope encourages us to "spend hours, weeks, or years of life with them" (Dilexi te, 104) and reminds us that Jesus did nothing else: He simply was with people. He did not overlook them. Just as in the parable of the Good Samaritan. "We have developed in many respects, but we are illiterate in accompanying, caring for, and supporting the weakest" (Dilexi te, 105). Can one be civilised and at the same time blind to the person lying nearby? The parable returns with new force. Every day I pass by someone who is, for me, that "wounded one by the roadside".
Elsewhere the Pope writes: "When I meet a person sleeping outside on a cold night, I can react by setting out from faith and love, recognising in this person a creature infinitely loved by the Father" (Dilexi te, 106). And he adds a question: "can holiness be understood without this living recognition of the dignity of every human being?" (Dilexi te, 106). It is precisely here that Dilexi te touches the core: holiness is not detached from tenderness. Finally, "we find Lazarus every day, if we look for him," wrote Gregory the Great (Dilexi te, 108). Not somewhere far away, but in our neighbourhood, in a conversation, at a school desk, in the family. Therefore: "do not waste the time of mercy, do not hide what you have received" (Dilexi te, 108). Do not wait until you are ready, until everything falls into place. Love is always now.
The poor do not only need us. We need them. It is they who teach us. "It is precisely the poor who evangelise us" (Dilexi te, 109). Their silence unmasks our anxiety. Their fragility reminds us that our security is an illusion. And their gaze, simple, without irony, teaches a humility that cannot be read in books. "For Christians the poor are not a sociological category, but the very body of Christ" (Dilexi te, 110), writes Leo XIV, and before my eyes I have the face of a sick woman to whom I brought Communion in the Provincial Hospital in Bielsko, where I served as a holiday replacement. When she received the Host, she said quietly: "At last I am not alone."
Further on comes a warning: "Every community that does not intend to cooperate creatively and effectively so that the poor may live with dignity will expose itself to the risk of decay" (Dilexi te, 113). Strong words. But perhaps necessary. For nothing destroys the Church like indifference in beautiful robes. "The worst discrimination the poor experience is the lack of spiritual care" (Dilexi te, 114). We often think they need only bread and work, while sometimes what they need most is hope. They need someone who will not only help them, but pray for them. Sit down and talk with them. But to do this, one must know how to offer it. A familiar word, is it not? Almsgiving. "It is not an outdated gesture, but an indispensable stage of encounter" (Dilexi te, 115). In a world where everything can be transferred to an account, almsgiving has meaning only when it requires touch, a look in the eyes, a brief "good morning", a smile that costs something. Leo XIV quotes St John Chrysostom: "Almsgiving is the wing of prayer. If you do not add the wing, your prayer will barely rise" (Dilexi te, 118). Prayer without a gesture stops at the lips.
"Let the poor person feel that the words of Jesus, 'I have loved you' (Rev 3:9), are addressed precisely to them" (Dilexi te, 121). If we truly want to be the Church of Jesus, we must learn one thing: that a person who comes to us cold, hungry, wounded, should hear in us not moralising, but one sentence that changes everything: "I have loved you."
Fr Adam Płonka
Bibliography:
- Leo XIV, Dilexi te, Rome 2025.
- T. Hergesel and R. Rubinkiewicz, Biblia Tysiąclecia. Pismo Święte Starego i Nowego Testamentu. Wydanie V, Poznań 2006.
