The prophet Zephaniah lifts up today in our first reading “a people humble and lowly.” The Psalmist exclaims, “The Lord hears the cry of the poor.” Jesus, the prophet, reminds the chief priests and the elders that tax collectors and prostitutes who believed in John the Baptist “are entering the Kingdom of God.”

A prophet in the 19th century, Saint Peter Julian Eymard, once wrote about the celebration of Christmas that “God became poor, in order to be the friend, the brother of the poor; God made himself weak in order to console the weak and the abandoned; God accepted suffering, in order to prove his love; God became a child, so that man (woman) would no longer be afraid of God.”

A new prophet in our midst, Pope Leo XIV, recently published his first Apostolic Exhortation, Dilexi te (“I have loved you.”) Commenting on today’s Psalm 34, he writes that “God is presented as the friend and liberator of the poor, and one who hears the cry of the poor and intervenes to free them” (17), and God has “a preferential love for the poor” (18). He asks all the Catholic faithful and people of good will to remember that “the condition of the poor is a cry that, throughout human history, constantly challenges our lives, societies, political and economic systems, and, not least, the Church. On the wounded faces of the poor, we see the suffering of the innocent and, therefore, the suffering of Christ himself” (9).

As we prepare for the coming of Emmanuel, God with us, let us keep in mind the poor and outcasts in our communities – as we do our Christmas shopping, discern our annual Christmas almsgiving, and plan our volunteer time.

Let Us Pray:

The Lord hears the cry of the poor.
When the poor one cried out, the LORD heard, and from his distress he saved him.
When the just cry out, the LORD hears them and from their distress he rescues them.
The LORD is close to the brokenhearted, and those who are crushed in spirit he saves.
The Lord hears the cry of the poor.