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>
<script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>
“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.”
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Summorum Pontificum was abrogated in 2021. This is just clinging to a past that is beyond its expiration date.
I see the Monopoly Man in the last picture took off his hat in church.
The TLM has lost. Trads just don’t realize it yet.
“Has lost”? I didn’t know it was a contest. Thanks a lot for letting me know that it is, from one perspective anyway.
It’s not a contest or competition. We’re a universal Church with room for many Rites and liturgies.
Unity, not uniformity.
Yeah but that was the Rupnik-Pontificate, so it’s to be ignored.
Scott Walker: you come across as an angry & bitter man. Try Christ.
Classic. Argumentum ad hominem followed with the obligatory ipse dixit.
Scott Walker. You have the perspicacity to have spotted the Monopoly Man in this very rare photo. Perhaps a premonition that the gods of good fortune are betting on the restoration of the TLM [why else would the Monopoly Man, an obvious traditionalist, have attended this Mass?].
Yours exhibits perfectly the problem at hand.
Scott;
Re: your 10/25 @9:51 p.m. – Do yourself a favor and go to a TLM. Get there about 30-45 minutes early, sit quietly (notice that the others are doing so) perhaps say a Rosary. Read from your Missal or just sit there and enjoy the silence until the Mass begins.
If you have to get up before dawn and then drive 50 or more miles to get there – tant mieux.
When in God’s universe and God’s eternity and human worship of God and His revelations of immutability has truth ever changed or been timebound?
Our patrimony.
Let the Extraordinary Form of the Mass BREATHE freely alongside so many other Rites in the Church each of which have their own form. Lets stop the warring among Catholics. If we don’t, we’re no better than Hamas v. Jews and Ukrainians v. Russians. But if we do, we’re more like Christ.
Right on, Deacon!
Deacon and Br Jaques: agreed. Liturgical peace is the only way forward. But who is making war? It’s been a one-sided liturgical-genocide since 16.07.2021.
“The pilgrimage began on the evening of Oct. 24 with vespers in Rome’s Basilica of San Lorenzo in Lucina, presided over by Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, archbishop of Bologna. A solemn closing Mass of Christ the King will be celebrated at the Church of Santissima Trinità dei Pellegrini on the final day of the pilgrimage, Oct. 26.”
Summorum Pontificum pilgrimage began with vespers in Rome’s Basilica of San Lorenzo in Lucina, presided over by Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, who has defected from The Catholic Faith through his public manifest heresy that denies Sacred Tradition, Sacred Scripture. And The Teaching Of The True Magisterium of The Catholic Church, Grounded In Sacred Tradition And Sacred Tradition, The Deposit Of Faith Christ Has Entrusted To His Church For The Salvation Of Souls, by his desire to Bless and have Christ’s One, Holy, Catholic, And Apostolic Church begin to Bless, disordered sexual relationships that deny Christ’s teaching regarding lust and the sin of adultery? Who would approve such a denial of The Deposit Of Faith , Christ Has Entrusted To His One, Holy, Catholic, And Apostolic Church, for The Salvation Of Souls and claim such an act is an act of compassion?
The question is, how can both Cardinal Zuppi and Cardinal Burke both be Baptized Catholics who desire to keep their Baptismal Promise to remain in communion with Christ and His One, Holy, Catholic, And Apostolic Church, and thus be United in Prayer With The One Word Of God, Jesus The Christ?
“They went out from us, but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would no doubt have remained with us; but that they may be manifest, that they are not all of us.”
https://www.ncregister.com/blog/cardinal-zuppi-same-sex-blessing
Grace a Dieu
Blessed are the Peacemakers.
Amen, Knowall.
And those who save souls.
Apparently the purpose of depriving Catholic faithful of the TLM is for the Church Establishment to show that they own and control everything in their “Bugnini-ized-NGO-of-the-decapitated-Body.”
As JP2 and B16 observed, they are incapable of “generosity.”
And Insane.
See, when you write things like that, it confirms that trads are recalcitrant and will never agree to be integrated into the post-Vatican II Church. Peter Kwasniewski published a screed on Friday saying that trads will never compromise nor assimilate nor yield. Pope Francis was correct that TLM adherents and communities inculcate insular separation from the rest of the Church.
Donald:
As I believe you are replying to me, I do not have the opportunity (any longer) to attend The Mass I served and sang at as a boy, so I am like millions more aptly labeled a “Bugnini-Mass-hostage.”
I simply observe that the Church Establishment is utterly incapable of being “generous” (as JP2/ B16 specifically directed) to faithful who desire the TLM, and as their just reward they deserve to wear the badge of their malice, as a sign of how miserly they are.
I suppose their miserliness flows from the apostasy that their “thought leaders” profess, and that do many of them silently assent to.
Poor darlings that they are..,
That’s just silly, Donald. I love the TLM but it’s not a deal breaker for me. I know many other Catholics who feel likewise.
Choices are good and so is diversity in a catholic and universal Church. It’s not all one or the other.
Donald: you sound angry. Why call fellow Catholics “trads”? It’s offensive. Does anyone have a gun pressed to your temple forcing you to attend Mass in the Extraordinary Form?
Why should Catholics be forced to make compromises with beliefs that are not catholic or damage the faith?
The church is dying because of all a the compromises that have been.
If the faith that is being taught and practiced today is the same as before the council, then why such hatred and anger towards the pre vatican II liturgy and practices?
The evidence is that there is a small cadre of prelates led by the late Pope for whom the suppression of this liturgy is an imperious exercise of ecclesial power. Now that we know the putative reasons for TC were contrived, it should be annulled.
Francis famous enjoined others to make a mess. Nobody can accuse him of not leading by example.
How many of vernaculars can the Mass be said? No restrictions that I am aware, but the Latin Mass is supposedly divisive. Nearly Verboten. It’s not about God or faith. It’s ungodly power politics baby.
I am not “a trad” but I would refuse to participate in that grand TLM in the Vatican because I do not wish to land myself to manipulation. It would be unthinkable for me to participate in such Mass while the same TLM is being suppressed/restricted to the point of suffocation elsewhere.
Most “trads” seem not to realize that they are being used by the Vatican as a tool for proving credibility to its current course. I have seen “trads” lashing those Catholics who criticize the Pope for his inconsistencies and watering down the faith or turning it into something else. Those “trads” appear not to realize that an occasional TLM given to them is only to buy their allegiance or at least to be quiet.
This is a brilliant technique, actually, “see, even the most traditional Catholics approve me so I am not deviating from the faith”.
However, there is an obvious flavour of insincerity and absurdity in a situation when TLM is pompously celebrated in the Vatican yet it is being suffocated elsewhere – in the common parishes, among common people who need it. If TLM is to be suppressed, it must be suppressed everywhere – but PL needs TLM, not as a people’s Mass but as a part of his entourage, as an artefact in a museum.
I don’t see any manipulation going on. I don’t know that we should even be looking for that. Why not be grateful for this opportunity & move forward?
Anna:
That is a very shrewd observation.
It’s all part of the cult and practice of deceitfulnees.
This Sunday November 2 will be the beginning of Eastern Daylight time, meaning that if I want to go to the Latin Mass in Lewiston, 55 miles away I can, since I won’t have to drive in the dark.
So I’ll be on my feet at 5:30 and around 6 Rachel and I will be on the road and we’ll proceed westerly to Lewiston to the magnificent Sts. Peter & Paul Basilica, built around 1900 or so by the Franco-American Catholics there (the Stations of the Cross are in French). Does all this make me a “trad”? I haven’t the slightest idea.
It’s been a long time since I’ve been there – I can’t wait!!
As a simple matter of ecclesiological liturgical coherence, the TLM should be completely eliminated. Yes, even the Ecclesia Dei religious communities should be told that they may no longer accept new candidates for ordination unless they agree to switch from celebrating the old Mass to the new Mass.
The TLM is no longer an adequate liturgical expression of Catholic faith after Vatican 2. That’s the crux of the matter. It would be liturgically incoherent to maintain both liturgical expressions simultaneously, and to continue with the unrevised Mass.
“The TLM is no longer an adequate liturgical expression of Catholic faith after Vatican 2.”
And The Divine Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom? Should it go as well? After all, the priest has his back to the people much of the time, some parts aren’t in English, the icon screen keeps the people from seeing all that is happening up front, and the reverence is overwhelming. Surely that’s not adequate for 2025, right?