First World Day of the Poor 19th November

First World Day of the Poor will be observed in the Universal Church on Sunday 19th November 

Extracts from the message of Pope Francis when he launched this new special day of prayer.

• Pope Francis has named the 33rd Sunday in Ordinary time the ‘World Day of the Poor’. His opening quotation: ‘Let us love, not with words but with deeds’, is adapted from the words of the Apostle John (1 jn 4: 10-19), in which we learn that God loved us first, and then gave himself completely by laying down his life for us ( 1Jn 3-16).

• The Our Father is the prayer of the poor. Everything that Jesus taught us in this prayer expresses and brings together the cry of all who suffer from life’s uncertainties and the lack of what they need.

• Pope Francis also refers to the way in which poverty challenges us “daily, in faces marked by suffering, margelization, oppression, violence, torture, imprisonment, war deprivation of freedom and dignity, ignorance and illiteracy, medical emergencies, shortage of work, trafficking and slavery, exile, extreme poverty and forced migration”.

• Pope Francis stresses that ‘faced with this scenario we cannot remain passive, much less resigned’.

• Pope Francis reminds us that, “the poor are not a problem; they are a resource from which to draw as we strive to accept and practise, in our lives, the message of the Gospel’.

• The challenge for each one of us is to respond positively to the words of Pope Francis with a new vision of life and society and become an even greater sign of Christ’s charity for the least and those most in need.