Vatican City, Nov 6, 2017 / 11:45 am (CNA/EWTN News).- As the Church prepares to celebrate the first World Day of the Poor, an event announced by Pope Francis last year, one Vatican official said the event will be an opportunity to grow in mercy and charity, shaping attitudes toward the poor and needy.
The World Day of the Poor, which was announced in Pope Francis’ closing letter for the Jubilee of Mercy, is founded on “this whole notion of reciprocity, of sharing with each other of what each other has,” Msgr. Geno Sylva told CNA in an interview.
It’s also based on “our understanding that each of us is poor in some way, and that we need to empty ourselves of certain things so that God’s grace can fill us, God’s mercy can fill us,” he said, adding that “there’s so much we can learn from those who are poor as we try to provide.”
An English-language official of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization, Msgr. Sylva spoke ahead of the first-ever World Day of the Poor, which is titled “Love not in word, but in deed,” and is set to take place exactly one year after the close of the Jubilee of Mercy.
The event, Sylva said, is “so beautiful and so powerful as a perpetual fruit of the jubilee of mercy.”
World Day for the Poor “ties perfectly in with the New Evangelization,” he said, “because the New Evangelization is able to engage people by presenting the mercy of God and seeing people in that mercy.”
Pope Francis has announced the World Day for the Poor as an annual observance on the Thirty-Third Sunday of Ordinary Time, a week before the Solemnity of Christ the King.
“This would be the worthiest way to prepare for the celebration of the Solemnity of our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, who identified with the little ones and the poor and who will judge us on our works of mercy,” he said, adding that the event would also “represent a genuine form of new evangelization which can renew the face of the Church as She perseveres in her perennial activity of pastoral conversion and witness to mercy.”
In Rome, the event will begin with a Nov. 18 prayer vigil and solemn vespers for all those who volunteer in organizations or associations that care for the poor.
The vigil, which will be presided over by Archbishop Rino Fisichella, President of the Council for the New Evangelization, will be held at the Roman Basilica of St. Lawrence Outside the Walls, a venue symbolically chosen in honor of the saint who once said that “the treasure of the Church are the poor.”
The following morning, local poor and needy people will be bused to the Vatican for Mass with Pope Francis in St. Peter’s Basilica, and will be offered a celebratory lunch afterward in different locations around Rome, including the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall.
In addition, the council has arranged for Italian doctors, nurses and specialists from varying practices to provide free medical care to the poor and needy attending the World Day of the Poor. They will set up tents and offer free services to attendees the week prior.
The council is expecting around 3,000 people to participate in the event. Since not everyone will be able to fit in the Vatican’s hall, other organizations and institutions have offered to host groups of the poor for lunch, such as the Pontifical North American College, which will serve around 200 people.
The meal, Syvla said, is meant to show attendees “that they are really special, and that we’re honored to be with them.”
Flowers will be placed on all the tables, multiple courses will be served, and a group of children will come into the Paul VI Hall to sing, while a band plays outside.
Those serving lunch will include a group of deacons from the Diocese of Rome, which Sylva said is a “very symbolic” gesture.
The World Day of the Poor will also be celebrated in dioceses and parishes “around the world,” Sylva said.
To this end, he said the council has developed a pastoral aid for parishes and schools, available on the council’s website, which has already been given to bishops’ conferences and nunciatures around the world.
Available in seven languages, the aid includes, among other things, prayer vigils, lectio divina prayers and the stories of Saints associated with the poor, “so it really will give priests and laypeople involved with leadership a concrete pastoral resource they can use with the people to whom they minister.”
Pointing to the logo for World Day of the Poor, Msgr. Sylva said the essence of the event can be summed up in the design, which portrays two people reaching toward each other – one from a doorway and the other from the outside – with a road in between.
<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet” data-lang=”en”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>If you haven't seen it yet, here's the logo for the World Day of the Poor (Nov. 19) <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/Catholic?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#Catholic</a> <a href=”https://t.co/ma1fWx99jo”>pic.twitter.com/ma1fWx99jo</a></p>— Michelle Bauman (@Michelle_Bauman) <a href=”https://twitter.com/Michelle_Bauman/status/927613427542925312?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>November 6, 2017</a></blockquote>
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“It’s so beautiful because you almost don’t know who’s the one asking for assistance and who’s the one giving assistance, but what we see is that this reciprocity, this shared essence in being in that the one on the outside realizes that to get in he’s got to hold that hand out, and the one on the inside realizes that he or she has to go out in order to encounter one another,” he said.
The image, he said, is a reminder that “everybody has something to share, everybody has something to give, and everybody is poor in some way.”
“So how do we hand-in-hand, heart-in-heart reach out to one another, and again to not only welcome each other into the doorway of the Church, into the heart of each believer, but also along that road in which we also accompany each other closer toward heaven?”
Pointing to Pope Francis’ message for the World Day of the Poor, published in June, Sylva noted that the Pope had said care for the poor shouldn’t be limited to occasional offerings that appease our consciences, but that charity must be a true encounter that shapes our daily lives.
As Christians, we are called to love everyone simply because “he or she has a need,” he said, explaining that the World Day of the Poor event “expands the notion of what ‘neighbor’ means.”
Christian charity, Sylva explained, is “not just for one day to put a coin in, but it’s an attitude towards the other that needs to change in each one of us, that we need to see each other as brothers and sisters, and that’s the real profundity of what our experience can be.”
[…]
Well, my goodness me! I think that I shall take up bank robbery for a living, and will go to Cardinal Marx to have my endeavors blessed before I head out for a heist. And while I’m at it, I’ll go out and commit perjury, but I’ll ask him for a blessing ceremony beforehand. And, y’know, there are some people who really annoy me, so I think I’ll poison or knife or shoot them – but I’ll be sure to get Cardinal Marx to “accompany me as an individual” as I do it.
It is a terrible thing to have evil on the loose in the Church, with corrupt leaders cooperating with it.
It must be exhausting to have to juggle so many “concrete situations” at once.
Perhaps I can hide some of those stabbed, poisoned, and shot annoyances in the concrete.
An internal contradiction of immense proportions. It is not possible to square this circle.
To be led away from Christ in the name of “mercy”.
Why doesn’t Cardinal Marx just convert to Anglicanism?
Dr Maike Hickson German born wife of Dr R Hickson and member of the John Paul II Academy for Human Life and the Family recently interviewed Dr Josef Seifert for 1Peter5 on his firing in Spain. Seifert cited Prof Gerhard Hover’s repudiation of intrinsic evil [Time is greater than space], the phi theological basis of Pope Francis’ New Paradigm, and basis for Cardinal Reinhard Marx’ position on homosexual union. From my Thomistic perspective “concrete circumstances” frequently cited by Pope Francis as moral determinants however mitigating or thought favorable cannot make an evil act good since the object of the act must be ordered to God. The moral law referencing human acts that are inherently evil reflect the divine law, and God who is neither subject to time or change. Evil is in the will of man, due to a willful privation of direction to a due end. If as Gerhard Hover argues time is reduced to the continuous motion of the Aristotelian tradition [form and absence of form which affects human acts] it must be taken as an excessive limitation [coarctata temporis acceptio]. Time Hover says is actually greater than the space by which it is measured. Human acts are of themselves transient in nature inclusive of their intrinsic moral nature. Time in this sense transcends the limitations of space and consequent restrictions like intrinsic evil. This theorem [Hover’s] effectively denies that evil is in contradiction to God. Evil must then exist as commensurate to the divine nature as good or evil, but dependent on human measurable time. Then nothing is intrinsically and forever evil to God. Since it is man that determines what is good or evil. That is apotheosis. Instead God unchanging undivided Pure Act and First Principle cannot be subject to moral divisibility that mirrors a Zoroastrian good and evil composite of justice, namely what is evil today is good tomorrow. In God there is no Darkness.
Hi ,
I’ve been a Catholic all my life, that’s almost 59 years.
This Cardinal Marx seems to have stopped being a Catholic AND DEFINATLY A CHRISTIAN, with his heinous attack on our Faith. How can you bless someone who quite clearly is facing an eternal punishment for their sin, and then inviting this perversion into any Christian church.
He should be guiding lost souls to the right path.
He is an insult to everything he is supposed to be, but more importantly what the Catholic faith is supposed to be.
I fear this could be a case of ” birds of a feather. He should get out of our Religion instead of soiling the already bad image Catholism already has with crimes against children.
This person or wanna be do gooder is a complete imbecile, if he finds his job too hard to do he should get out ,and stop damaging 2000 years of Christianity.
Hi Father Peter,
I find your comments very very deep and learned, complicated and difficult to understand.
But to simplify.
God does, many many times through the bible point out what is good and what is evil. This to me is where mankind finds the answers to life’s conundrums, so in ” the rule book” or bible every conceivable sin for mankind is addressed.
Now, if an individual commits certain sins throughout their lives and never seeks forgivenesses and most importantly, never ceases these sins – then their soul is lost for eternity. This may sound very harsh BUT this is Gods law and no matter how hurtful any individual may find this, this is the truth.
Now anyone who tries to alter the word and teachings of God is foolish because the Bible is foolproof, but NOT for the foolish.
To be truly fair to anyone who seeks advice and who genuinely does not know the answers it is best to make them fully aware of the dire eternal consequences of leading a sinful life.
God Bless
Brian.
I’m not sure about these German Marxes whether they be Reinhard or Karl. I’d rather take Groucho and Harpo.
Groucho Marx…. ” Love goes out the door and innuendo”.
Hi ,
I’ve been a Catholic all my life, that’s almost 59 years.
This Cardinal Marx seems to have stopped being a Catholic AND DEFINATLY A CHRISTIAN, with his heinous attack on our Faith. How can you bless someone who quite clearly is facing an eternal punishment for their sin, and then inviting this perversion into any Christian church.
He should be guiding lost souls to the right path.
He is an insult to everything he is supposed to be, but more importantly what the Catholic faith is supposed to be.
I fear this could be a case of ” birds of a feather. He should get out of our Religion instead of soiling the already bad image Catholism already has with crimes against children.
This person or wanna be do gooder is a complete imbecile, if he finds his job too hard to do he should get out ,and stop damaging 2000 years of Christianity.