On October 4, 2025, the Memorial of Saint Francis of Assisi, Pope Leo XIV published his first apostolic exhortation, Dilexi Te.[1] An apostolic exhortation serves as an encouragement of a specific community toward a certain goal or practice. In this case, the Holy Father urges “All Christians to Love the Poor.” This exhortation presses us to see Christ in the poor among us. Using scripture, he shows us Christ’s relationship with the poor and calls us to emulate it. Relying on church fathers, he argues that charity is a matter of justice.
The Holy Father stresses that it is important to have a holistic definition of poverty. Also, the use of economic data must be done with great care so that the poor are adequately represented.[2] Further, he holds that opportunities for meaningful work offer the best solution to poverty. The Holy Father stresses that Christian duty is to accompany migrants, and to embrace almsgiving to benefit those suffering poverty today. The over-all assignment of this exhortation is to live out a love that is tempered with justice – especially for our sisters and brothers enduring poverty.
All too often Catholics (and others) still extend concern and care for people who suffer economic poverty based on a singular, narrow, and rather unhealthy notion of “sacrificial love.” As such, they claim the sacrificial love of Jesus as the model of the kind of love required of us. While there is a place for sacrifice within Christian morality as one dimension of loving, if we examine the life of Christ, it is not the only perspective from which Jesus extends his love. Indeed, sacrificial love can become unhealthy, self-abusive, or destructive. Thus, I suggest that it is a mutual love that dominated Jesus’ life and ministry. It is to this way of loving that Pope Leo XIV calls us.
Often, it is the first experience of being loved by another which teaches us what loving is all about and how to love others. Indeed, if we observe the life of Jesus, we see that he sought to be loved, even as he chose to love others. Certainly, his relationship with his Father was essential, but that was not all. Indeed, the God of Israel that Jesus knew was known to suffer at a break in the loving relationship with humankind (Gen 6:6). The very notion of a need of forgiveness implies a desire and need of a kind of reciprocation and mutual love.
The Trinitarian triadic relationship provides the primary model for mutual relations. This follows the Jewish understanding of God’s response to sin as pathos, sympathy.[3] Judaism idealizes love as a kind of fellowship.[4] The Hebrew Bible provides numerous examples of relational desire (Job 10:16; Micah 6:9; Gen. 3:9). Additionally, the Hebrew Bible uses familial and marriage language seeking loving intimacy of God and the People.
We can see this desire for a relational stance carried over in the life and ministry of Jesus. Though John the Baptist heralds Jesus’ arrival as the “one more righteous than himself,” he does not follow Jesus (Matt. 3:1-3; Lk.3:4-7; Jn. 1:23). In fact, John sends his disciples to question Jesus (Matt. 11:6; Matt. 11:11). Jesus soon recognized that establishing a mutual relationship in which his love was reciprocated by John would not be realized (Matt. 23:37). But Jesus’ strategy was not to give up but to forgive and continue to love, still seeking mutuality. If Jesus didn’t seek mutuality in love, there would be no reason for him to have lamented the lack of reciprocation by those with whom he sought relationship.
The notion of God’s mutual love relationship is at the heart of the concern Pope Leo XIV expressed for all of us and, in turn, from us toward those burdened by poverty. The cross symbolizes the violation of love, perhaps more than it does love itself. As Beverly Wildung Harrison put it, “…the love we need and want is deeply mutual love, love that has both the quality of a gift received and the quality of a gift given.” [5] Indeed, Jesus’ act of love was not motivated by his lust for sacrifice but in his power of mutuality.” [6]
Martin Buber, describing the Jewish prophetic tradition reminds us: “You know always in your heart that you need God more than anything; but do you not know too that God needs you – in the fullness of His eternity needs you?”.[7] From a Christian feminist perspective, Carol P. Christ holds that not all forms of self-love should be prohibited, either – especially for women who have experienced abuse.[8] Also, Margaret A, Farley held that mutuality is “a concept central to the Covenant tradition because God’s commitment to human persons has mutuality as its goal.” [9]
Finally, mutual love is also significant from the standpoint of self-realization. In mutual love people experience joy, secure well-being, and self-affirmation as moral goodness. Human relations become a reflection of God’s intentions for everyone. God desires us, loves us, and the human well-being of all. Like God, we need to desire, and to the extent humanly possible, create and sustain the well-being of – not only ourselves, but one another – especially the most poor among us. Why? …. Dilexi Te!
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[1] Apostolic Exhortation Dilexi Te of The Holy Father Leo XIV to All Christians On Love For The Poor, https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/apost_exhortations/ documents/20251004-dilexi-te.html, November 21, 2025.
[2] The following data sets provide evidence of the poverty the Holy Father addresses in the USA and globally: For Poverty in the United States, see “Data on Poverty in the United States,” The Center for American Progress, https://www.americanprogress.org/data-view/poverty-data/. Also see, Christina Bijou “End of Pandemic-Era Benefits Resulted in Higher Three-Year Supplemental Poverty Rates From 2022 to 2024 Compared to the Official Poverty Rate,” September 09, 2025. https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2025/09/spm-below-official-poverty-rate.html; “Federal Poverty Level (FPL),” https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/federal-poverty-level-fpl/; ‘Poverty Rate by State,’ in “End of Pandemic-Era Benefits Resulted in Higher Three-Year Supplemental Poverty Rates From 2022 to 2024 Compared to the Official Poverty Rate,” September 09, 2025, https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2025/09/spm-below-official-poverty-rate.html. For World Poverty 2025, see United Nations, “Goal #1: End poverty in all its forms everywhere,” https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/poverty/. Jonas Health et al., “September 2025 global poverty update from the World Bank: New data and regional classifications,” September 30, 2025, https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/opendata/september-2025-global-poverty-update-from-the-world-bank–new-da.
[3] Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism (New York: Meridian Books, 1959), 118, 124.
[4] Ibid.,141.
[5] Beverly Wildung Harrison, Making the Connections: Essays in Feminist Social Ethics (Boston: Beacon Press, 1985),17.
[6] Ibid.,18.
[7] Martin Buber, I And Thou, Second Edition (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958), 82.
[8] Carol P. Christ, Diving Deep and Surfacing: Women Writers on Spiritual Quest (Boston: Beacon Press, 1980), 13.
[9] Margaret A, Farley, Personal Commitments: Making, Keeping, Breaking (New York: Harper & Row), 129.