For God So Loved the World…

STEWARDS OF OUR EARTH

All of God’s Creation

Social Justice Committee, Holy Cross Parish, Mt. Airy, December 21, 2025

In the last months of his life, Pope Francis was preparing an Apostolic Exhortation on the Church’s care for the poor, Dilexi Te (I Have Loved You), as if Christ speaks those words to each of them, saying: “You have little power,” yet “I have loved you” (Rev 3:9). Pope Leo added his own reflections to the document and issued it at the beginning of his pontificate. (#3) 

Precisely in order to share the limitations and fragility of our human nature, God himself became poor and was born in the flesh like us. We came to know him in the smallness of a child laid in a manger and in the extreme humiliation of the cross, where he shared our radical poverty, which is death. (#16) The entire history of our redemption is marked by the presence of the poor. (#17)

Christian holiness often flourishes in the most forgotten and wounded places of humanity. The poorest of the poor — those who lack not only material goods but also a voice and the recognition of their dignity — have a special place in God’s heart. They are the beloved of the Gospel, the heirs to the Kingdom (cf. Lk 6:20). It is in them that Christ continues to suffer and rise again. It is in them that the Church rediscovers her call to show her most authentic self. (#76)

“We have to state, without mincing words, that there is an inseparable bond between our faith and the poor” (Evangelii Gaudium, 48). In the past two centuries, the various movements of workers, women and young people, and the fight against racial discrimination, gave rise to a new appreciation of the dignity of those on the margins of society. The Church’s social doctrine also emerged from this matrix. (#82)

There is no shortage of theories attempting to justify the present state of affairs or to explain that economic thinking requires us to wait for invisible market forces to resolve everything. Nevertheless, the dignity of every human person must be respected today, not tomorrow, and the extreme poverty of all those to whom this dignity is denied should constantly weigh upon our consciences. (#92)

While it is true that the rich care for the poor, the opposite is no less true. This is a remarkable fact confirmed by the entire Christian tradition. Lives can actually be turned around by the realization that the poor have much to teach us about the Gospel and its demands. By their silent witness, they make us confront the precariousness of our existence. (#109)

Our Catholic Social Teaching Principle - Option for the Poor and Vulnerable - proclaims that a basic moral test is how our most vulnerable members are faring. In a society marred by deepening divisions between rich and poor, our tradition recalls the story of the Last Judgment (Mt.25) and instructs us to put the needs of the poor and vulnerable first. 

Here at Holy Cross, some examples of how we do this include donations to the Holy Cross Food Pantry each week, donations to the One Warm Coat Drive in December, visiting the sick, accompanying immigrants, and parishioners’ volunteer work feeding the hungry at Face to Face. 

Blessings to all of you who care for others each day in your prayers, words, and actions. 

Comments on this column may be directed to the Social Justice Committee at socialjustice@holycrossphl.org. Click here for column archive.