You, Lord, are my hope – IX WORLD DAY OF THE POOR – Sunday, 16 November 2025
The World Day of the Poor was established by Pope Francis at the end of the 2017 Year of Mercy and began to be celebrated in 2017. The Pope desired it to be celebrated on the 33rd Sunday of Ordinary Time, as “an aid to communities and all the baptized to reflect on how poverty is at the heart of the Gospel.” This celebration is preceded by a message from the Holy Father in which he invites the Church to focus its attention on a specific theme. This year it will be celebrated on November 16, and Pope Leo chose the theme “You, Lord, are my hope” (Ps 71:5), emphasizing that Christian hope is born not from abundance but from need. Precisely for this reason, the poor “can become witnesses of a strong and reliable hope,” since, due to their need, many of them find their greatest hope in God.
On this day, the themes of the poor, hope, and our Redemptorist mission converge once again. These categories can only be understood in light of our faith and our following of Jesus Christ the Redeemer, who became poor and proclaimed the poor blessed (Mt 5:3-11; Lk 6:20). For us Redemptorists, the question of the poor leads us to the essence of our missionary vocation. Our constitutions establish that our mission is characterized by service to people, especially those “who, due to social conditions, are poorest and most needy” (Const. 14). This mission “includes the liberation and salvation of the entire human person,” and thus Redemptorists make the option for the poor their very raison d’être in the Church (cf. Const. 5). Our constitutions and statutes establish that, according to the spirit and intuition of St. Alphonsus, the Redemptorists will be truly missionaries only if they have Christ and the poor in their hearts, living and acting as collaborators of Christ the Redeemer in an apostolic community (cf. Const. 2).
Thus, the option for the poor—Pope Francis reminded us—is neither a sociological category, nor an ideological option (right or left), nor an option tangential to our mission, but is the distinctive sign of the Congregation founded by Saint Alphonsus. Likewise, it is the poor who help us rediscover our missionary vocation in today’s changing world, and thus find ways to live and implement it; it is they who show us the face and mission of Christ. For this reason, in Dilexi Te, Pope Leo forcefully states: “It must be said without hesitation that there is an indissoluble bond between our faith and the poor (cf. EG 48).” The lives of our saints are the clearest sign of this union between our faith, our mission, and the poor.
The Dicastery for Evangelization has prepared a prayer resource that our communities can use and adapt to their own needs and circumstances. May this day help the Redemptorist family focus its attention on what defines our missionary vocation: the proclamation of the Good News to the poor.
Fr. Cristian Bueno, CSsR.
Executive Secretary of the General Secretariat for Evangelization
Here you can download the material for this Day prepared by the Vatican Dicastery.
