From the Justice, Peace, and Integrity of Creation Committee Jan. 2026
In the spring of 2022, I had the opportunity to travel to the Holy Land. At the end of one of our sessions, our group was overlooking the Mount of Olives and the Kedron Valley just down the hill from the city of Jerusalem. For whatever reason, the Incarnation became very real to me as we sat and rested on the hillside after a long day of climbing hilly streets. God took on our flesh and dwelt among us and walked these same hills that we had just walked. God became a human being and entered into our smallness and experienced our reality in every aspect apart from sin. Jesus struggled up and down hills, just like us. Jesus also lived a life of poverty, which is a very different kind of life than many of us live today.
Pope Leo XIV, in his apostolic exhortation Dilexi Te writes, “… ‘our faith in Christ, who became poor, and was always close to the poor and the outcast, is the basis of our concern for the integral development of society’s most neglected members.’ I often wonder, even though the teaching of Sacred Scripture is so clear about the poor, why many people continue to think that they can safely disregard the poor.” (#23) When I read this paragraph, it makes me think about how I might treat Jesus if He stood before me as a poor person. This often crosses my mind as I drive down the streets here in Columbus, Ohio, and I see men and women alike with signs begging for money.
Later in his encyclical, Pope Leo XIV writes, “The community of the faithful … was rooted in being close to the poor, whom they considered not just an ‘appendage,’ but an essential part of Christ’s living body.” (#39) This encyclical challenges us to change how we view and think about the poor. They are not some “other” that is lesser than us, nor are they some problem to be solved. They are our brothers and sisters. They are sons and daughters of God who “have become near by the blood of Christ” (Ephesians 2:13). St. Gaspar spent much of his ministry in close proximity with the poor where he got to know and understand their sufferings at an intimate level. As Missionaries of the Precious Blood and Companions, we ought to bear this in mind wherever we may find ourselves.
Fr. Greg Evers, C.PP.S.
JPIC committee member