My dear brothers and sisters in the Lord,

The Fourth Sunday of Lent is known as Laetare Sunday or the Sunday on which we rejoice.  Our Lenten journey is half over and we look forward to the joy of Easter. Each year on Laetare Sunday a collection is taken up throughout the United States for Catholic Relief Services and other church organizations that assist those with special needs.
We look at the situation in the world today and we recognize that there are many areas of conflict. It is just to these areas of conflict that Catholic Relief Services and its sister organizations direct their attention.    The purposes are to give direct relief assistance and secondary services to those especially in need. Today, as I write, the situation in Syria is critical.  As you have read in The Tablet (March 3), we received a report directly from inside Syria from one of our Catholic bishops regarding the situation there.  Today refugees from Syria are flooding into Turkey and Lebanon, fleeing the civil strife taking place there. This scenario repeats itself over and over again throughout the world. The famine in the Horn of Africa also has produced refugees seeking a safe haven, and the situation in Darfur is far from over. In each of these critical places, the Catholic Church finds itself, either directly through Catholic Relief Services and other organizations, or through the local Caritas, ready and willing to assist those with these critical needs.
We rejoice that the Church is organized, that we can function internationally, giving relief assistance to those most in need. These organizations represent you and enable you to live up to the Lenten call by Pope Benedict XVI in his Lenten message that we reach out to others with works of charity.
The theme for this year’s appeal is How Will You Help Jesus in Disguise?  When we consider the message of Matthew 25: 13-35, we hear the words, “I was hungry you gave me food; I was thirsty you gave me drink; I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” Jesus truly is in disguise when we reach out to those most in need. For our collection this Sunday, I ask your special generosity because the needs are great and the resources are scarce.
Each time the Church Universal seeks to assist others, it does put out into the deep recesses of human need. It is almost impossible to meet all the human needs that we find in the world today. But it is possible to assist those whom we must.  Jesus truly is in disguise in our world today and we must go beyond what we see, and meet the needs of those whom, for us, take the place of Jesus Christ.