“Dilexi Te” in Action - Walking with the Poor
by Luis Arevalo, Catholic Social Services Manager
In Dilexi Te, “I have Loved You”, Pope Leo articulates a truth we desire to live by every day at Catholic Social Services (CSS). He makes clear that the poor are not problems to be solved but the very face of Christ, asking to be encountered. The preferential love for the poor is not an optional extra, it is at the heart of Christ’s ministry, articulated in, through, and by his Church.
Along with all Catholic Social Teaching, Dilexi Te makes clear that the Gospel is for all people, including the poor. The Gospel calls us to see that Christ is already present, because everyone is made in the image and likeness of God.
Pope Leo reminds us that Christ humbled himself to be close to us. He writes: “Our faith in Christ, who became poor, and was always close to the poor and the outcast, is the basis of our concern for the integral development of society’s most neglected members.” At CSS, we are never comfortable with the language of
“charity”, if by charity, we are merely being condescending to the poor, that we are being kind in our supposed superiority. What we seek to practice is charity in the truest sense: a recognition that in serving those whom society marginalises, we are not doing people favours, but fulfilling our intrinsic Christian vocation, to love our neighbour as Christ has loved us.
“Ubi Caritas et amor, Deus ibi est” (where there is charity and love, God abides.) These are the words of the Entrance Antiphon at the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday evening, where Jesus washes the feet of his disciples.
There are many reasons why people who come to us are poor. Those who may have material wealth, may hold many presumptions as to why people find themselves in difficult circumstances. Pope Leo puts it bluntly when he says:
“The poor are not there by chance or by blind and cruel fate.”
They are there because of decisions made in boardrooms and parliaments, because of economic structures when they prioritise profit over people.
The work of CSS operates on multiple levels. Yes, we provide immediate relief: the counselling session, the meal, the practical support. Every person we serve with dignity, is a small act of resistance against the “throwaway culture” that Pope Leo decries.
Perhaps the most challenging invitation in Dilexi Te is the call to see the poor not as objects of our service, but as subjects with agency, wisdom, and something essential to teach us. Pope Leo writes:
“We must ‘let ourselves be evangelized’ by the poor and acknowledge ‘the mysterious wisdom which God wishes to share with us through them.’”
At CSS, the most innovative aspects of our service delivery have often come from listening to those we serve. Pope Leo reminds us that “the poor are not a sociological category, but the very ‘flesh’ of Christ,” which means encountering them should change us as much as we hope to support them and allow them to discover Christ in us.
Care for the poor is not just a ministry the Church performs, it is constitutive
of the Church’s identity. Pope Leo is uncompromising: “Any Church community, if it thinks it can comfortably go its own way without creative concern and effective cooperation in helping the poor to live with dignity and reaching out to everyone, will also risk breaking down.” Along with all seeking to walk with the poor, our work at CSS is not an initiative to help Catholics feel better about ourselves. It is but a small way we can live out the Gospel. In my last article for Inform, I referred to the Corporal Works of Mercy. Every Catholic in our diocese has a stake in this work because it embodies what we believe about human dignity, solidarity, and God’s preferential love for the poor.
Pope Leo insists that authentic care for the poor must address political and economic structures: “We need to be increasingly committed to resolving the structural causes of poverty. This is a pressing need that cannot be delayed.” Our immediate services matter: they represent Christ’s compassion made tangible. But if we are not also working toward a society where fewer people need emergency support, we are not living the full implications of Catholic Social Teaching.
At CSS, we find ourselves at the intersection of mercy and justice, immediate compassion and structural transformation. We are called to serve individuals with excellence. We are also called to challenge the forces that create their need.
The invitation Pope Leo extends is both simple and impossibly demanding: to see the poor not as problems to be solved, but as the face of Christ asking to be loved. At CSS, seeing the face of Christ in those we serve is a theological imperative: it is Monday morning, it is the person in the waiting room, it is the moment of encounter when professional distance dissolves and we simply meet another human being in their need.
This is what it means to live Dilexi Te:
to receive Christ’s love for the poor and to make that love tangible, immediate and real. Every day at CSS, in countless unremarkable moments, we are seeking to reflect Dilexi Te.
“I have loved you.” These words, chosen by Pope Leo, are the words we embody through our work. In embodying them, we discover they are also spoken to us: for in serving the poor, we encounter the One who became poor for our sake, and nothing is ever the same again.
Join us in answering this call. The poor are not waiting for our convenience: they are Christ asking to be encountered, now.
