NeuroDivine

When Pope Leo XIV speaks of love, it is not abstract. In Dilexi Te, his apostolic exhortation to the poor, he names love as something deliberate, embodied, and preferential. “I have loved you,” he writes—not as a general sentiment, but as a declaration to those who live close to the edge. As someone who is autistic, medically dependent, and shaped by the rhythms of Anglican Benedictine life, I receive this word not as distant doctrine but as intimate recognition.

This document does not rush. It dwells. It listens. It repeats. Its rhythm feels like lectio divina—slow, spacious, and attentive to the margins. For those of us who process the world differently, who live by structure and nuance, this is a mercy. It does not demand instant clarity. It invites slow unfolding.

The Holy Father’s reflection on the woman who anointed Jesus is especially resonant. Her gesture was intuitive, misunderstood, and unforgettable. She did not ask permission. She acted from love. And Christ received her offering without correction. For those of us whose gestures are often misread, whose presence is quiet, whose offerings are not always seen, this moment is balm. It affirms that love expressed through difference is not only valid—it is sacred.

Dilexi Te speaks of poverty in many forms: material, emotional, spiritual, cultural. It does not flatten suffering into one shape. It names the cry of those without voice, without ease, without space. For the neurodivergent reader, this breadth makes room. It acknowledges that exclusion is not always visible. That poverty can be social, sensory, or systemic. That the Church’s call to love must include those whose needs are not easily categorised.

There is a Benedictine clarity here: the poor are not objects of pity but subjects of grace. The Rule teaches us to serve the sick as Christ, to honour the youngest, to receive the guest as holy. Dilexi Te echoes this posture. It invites the Church to kneel beside the poor, not to stand above them. It insists that love for the lowly is not optional—it is the centre of the Gospel.

As an Anglican, I hear sacramental echoes throughout this text. The Holy Father speaks of memory—not just as recollection, but as recognition. To remember the poor is to remember Christ. To remember the gestures that did not fit the script but revealed the heart of God. This is the Church’s vocation: to be a community of remembrance, of presence, of fidelity in small things.

For those of us who live by the bell, who pray the hours, who find God in the structure of liturgy and the surprise of grace, Dilexi Te feels like a psalm. It does not erase our difference. It sings it. It affirms that constraint—whether medical, sensory, or social—is not a barrier to holiness but a doorway. That being out of sync with dominant culture is not a failure but a vantage point.

“I have loved you,” the Holy Father writes. Not despite your difference. Through it.