Until his death last year, Farley Magee, the lead musician at Sunday services for our ecumenical Inner City Pastoral Ministry in Edmonton, would frequently sing the James Manley composition “Part of the Family.” “Come in, come in and sit down; you are a part of the family,” the song begins. The song was especially appropriate for the congregation of low-income and homeless people who come to Sunday worship. Being part of a family is a central need for those on the street.

Pope Leo XIV struck a similar chord in his first major statement, Dilexi Te (I Have Loved You) published last month. “No Christian can regard the poor simply as a societal problem; they are part of our ‘family.’ They are one of us,” the pope wrote. 

The poor are our brothers and sisters. While we talk about seeing Christ in the poor, we can also see the poor as estranged family members. 

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Pope Leo writes at length about the Church’s “great tradition” of welcoming the poor in their many faces. The body of formal Catholic social teaching was born in 1891, but roughly 40 per cent of the Pope’s apostolic exhortation is devoted to the Church’s unbroken history since apostolic times of caring for those in need. Care for the poor is tradition in the fullest sense of that term. He leaves us to wonder why this tradition is honoured more in the breach than in the observance.

Jesus himself was counted among the poor. Poverty marked every aspect of his life from his lowly birth through his life in Nazareth and public ministry to his death on the Cross. The Son of God could have chosen to be born among society’s wealthy and powerful. But that is not who God is. 

“It is not enough to profess the doctrine of God’s incarnation in general terms. To enter truly into this great mystery, we need to understand clearly that the Lord took on a flesh that hungers and thirsts, and experiences infirmity and imprisonment.”

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Despite 2,000 years of Church teaching and witness, we remain entrapped in seeing the poor as “other.” We are quick to see the supposed sins of the poor and marginalized and to judge them as responsible for their own plight. Yet too often we remain oblivious to our own indifference and self-centredness. There is something here about failing to see the plank in one’s own eye.

The Pope quotes the letter of St. James about the futility of pursuing earthly riches: “Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you, and it will eat your flesh like fire.” The comfortable life offers the illusion of happiness, but it is a spiritual disease that consumes those who pursue it.

Despite the claim of the wealthy that global poverty is declining, the Pope says otherwise. The gap between the rich and poor has become a yawning chasm, and that polarization is due to “ideologies that defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation.” Social and structural changes are needed.

The existence of poverty in a world of plenty is a choice. It is a choice made, first, by elites who seek to enhance their wealth and power. However, especially in democratic societies, it is also a result of the indifference of the many to the plight of their brothers and sisters. We distance ourselves from the poor and make insufficient effort to understand why they go without while we prosper.

Pope Leo asks why, in the face of Scripture and tradition, Christians believe they can safely disregard the poor. It’s a question he leaves for us to answer. We must scour our consciences to provide an answer. Do we really see Jesus in the poor and the poor in Jesus? 

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The autonomy that drives our economy and culture is a manufactured autonomy. If we took seriously the brotherhood and sisterhood of humanity, we would know that worship of individual autonomy is a false story perpetrated to protect vested interests. 

However, we do have an alternative. We can act. Pope Leo concludes his exhortation with a call to alms. Almsgiving will not end poverty, but it “at least offers us a chance to halt before the poor, to look into their eyes, to touch them and to share something of ourselves with them.” In sharing, we will come to know the excluded members of our family and to give them some of the dignity they deserve.