Dilexi Te 

A little over a week ago, Pope Leo XIV issued his first teaching document in the form of an apostolic exhortation called Dilexi Te. To be honest, I have not yet read it myself, only commentaries about it (always a dangerous thing to do). But among those who have shared their thoughts on the document, the Catholic writer Amy Welborn’s reflection stood out. I always find her very thoughtful. Her insights tend to make me uncomfortable in a good way. She begins her analysis of Dilexi Te with a quote from the text, where the Holy Father reminds Christians everywhere that love for the poor has always been an essential part of the mission of the Church. He writes: “love for the poor – whatever the form their poverty may take – is the evangelical hallmark of a Church faithful to the heart of God.” The Holy Father notes that all movements of renewal in the history of the Church have made preferential concern for the poor a priority. He then says: “No Christian can regard the poor simply as a societal problem; they are part of our ‘family.’ They are ‘one of us.’ Nor can our relationship to the poor be reduced to merely another ecclesial activity or function.” 

Some have remarked that Pope Leo is simply reiterating what the Church has always taught about the poor. But Welborn believes that the document contains an important insight for us today. She writes: “There’s something in the spirituality of all the saints that Leo mentions, from Chrysostom to Mother Teresa – that’s essentially missing from contemporary Catholic spirituality, at the popular or even catechetical level: duty.” By neglecting the personal duty we owe to the poor and suffering, she argues, much of what passes for Catholic spirituality these days reduces it to a project of personal fulfillment. We are told to discern our gifts and talents and where our desires and dreams are leading us and to see that as indicating God’s will and our path forward in life. This is an elitist spirituality, argues Welborn, one that presumes leisure, freedom, and mobility – things not available to the vast majority of people throughout history, also called to personal holiness. Such an approach to spirituality “works to drastically narrow our spiritual vision, to lead us on a path on which our prayers and spiritual practices become about our feelings, our sense of ourselves, our peace with where we’re at in the world. In that context, concerns about charity and justice become hobbies. They become elements that we add as part of our personal spiritual growth project rather than aspects of faith that’s presented to us as an objective reality that we have a duty to form our lives to.”  

The lives of the great saints of our tradition reveal that authentic Catholic spirituality is not about self-fulfillment. It is about self-denial and self-forgetfulness for the sake of loving others – at home, in the neighborhood, in the city, across the world – radically and sacrificially in imitation of Jesus. This always involves the cross. Welborn concludes that Dilexi Te provides a useful opportunity to “ask hard questions about how much our dedication to our gifts & talents and our spirituality of personal fulfilment is standing in the way of our joining the rich, essential, unbroken tradition of actual discipleship that the Holy Father so eloquently points us toward.” 

posted 10/18/25