Poverty and Christmas

In his first encyclical, Pope Leo XIV speaks to us about the poor and God's predilection for those who suffer most. Throughout his pontificate, Francis has also insisted on this theme: Christ's love for them.

Now, as I prepare for Christmas and look for a good butcher shop where I can buy a nice turkey, I think about all this and find it hard to understand completely. The poor, for me, tend to be too abstract a concept, and I wonder if I don't understand the Popes well or if I simply lack compassion. I get caught up thinking about how to fulfill my family obligations and, at the same time, take care of those most in need, as so many saints did.

I know that Christ became the poorest of the poor and that he remains the most dependent of all: a simple piece of bread in a small box. But what can I do for the poor if I am surrounded by thousands of family emergencies and loved ones who also require attention? After giving it a lot of thought, I have come to a conclusion that I believe the Pope would agree with.

Every time a text by the Pope is published, I can't help but take it very seriously. When reading I loved you and meditate on Christ's predilection for the poorest, I ask myself: what about my own predilection? What does my heart lean toward?

The poor and the sick are protagonists in the Gospel. What is it about them that merits this divine predilection? It is pure necessity. And that predilection teaches me something decisive: life and dependence are equivalent; they are the same reality. Life does not begin when dependence is resolved. Life does not begin when the sick person is cured, when the baby grows up and becomes independent, when work problems disappear, when I get a new and better job, when I find a good girlfriend, when I have my first child or another one, when I manage to buy a house... 

I often live my life thinking that way: waiting for the perfect situation, instead of enjoying the situation I find myself in.

Life is just that: the endless hassle of changing diapers, accompanying every step of my children's growth, caring for my sick ones, spending sleepless nights due to my little ones' coughs and fevers, taking my youngest son to his therapies every day. Life is listening to my husband when he talks to me about his work or what worries him. Sometimes it's more intense and other times it's lighter, but it's still the same life.

When unemployment, illness, pain, or difficulties arise, life becomes more alive, more intense. And when everything flows smoothly—the children are healthy, school is going well, work is steady, dinner is ready, and there are no tantrums—we say we've had a good day. And it's true: on those days, life weighs less heavily. But both forms are life. Never perfect, but always lived with fondness.

Living all this with predilection—as Christ loves the poor—is what the Pope teaches me in this encyclical.

From a modern perspective, all this seems absurd. In The age of emptiness, Lipovetsky describes how citizens of contemporary societies live and interact: individualism has infiltrated our most basic form of connection, even with those we love most. Without meaning to, we live together as individuals who feel it is their duty to improve their personal situation as much as possible. In this mindset, dependence appears to be a threat to a good life.

But, from Christ's perspective, that logic does not hold up. And Christmas makes that clear. The sick and the poor represent extreme forms of dependence, and now, at Christmas, so does God himself, who will live that way until the end.

The question for me, when reading this encyclical and understanding the privileged place of the poor in Christ's heart, is not to feel guilty for living well or to romanticize poverty. It is to understand that when the Pope speaks of poverty, he is speaking of something more than a social group; he is speaking of the bonds of the heart. And this proposal—to live with predilection what we have been given—frees us from the individualism that traps us all: that which makes us live wishing for a life different from the one we already have.