Then the righteous will answer him and say,
‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you,
or thirsty and give you drink?
There is no such thing as love for God that is indifferent to others, "for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen" (see First John 4:2). We tend to treat love of God and love of neighbor as more separable and distinct than in fact they are. For God we try to be pious and reverent, loving, humble and obedient. For our neighbor we may well try to help, but often as though it were an optional extra, and not as though there was anything significantly at stake.
‘Amen, I say to you, whatever you did
for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.’
We do not tend to fully recognize how deeply that the Lord himself identifies with and is present in the hungry and thirsty, the stranger, the naked, and the imprisoned. Rather than treating them reverently, recognizing that we are blessed to be able to offer something to the Lord through them, we instead treat them as nuisances who should feel thankful and indebted to us for anything we happen to do for them. It is really quite the opposite. In serving any of these least ones we are privileged to have the ability to do concrete things which Jesus receives as done for him. If this is so, shouldn't reverence mark our attitude when we engage in the corporeal and spiritual works of mercy?
Admittedly, it is difficult to recognize Jesus in his "distressing disguise" as Saint Teresa of Calcutta described it. Saint Paul himself required a revelation of the truth of the reality of this hidden presence in his people in order to recognize it.
And he said, “Who are you, Lord?” And he said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting (see Acts 9:5).
From the conversion of Paul we can see that not only does Jesus take the omission of good we were equipped to do for the poor and did not do as not done for him, he also takes the persecution and oppression of his people personally. His Church is his own body, and all people are meant to be a part of it. Anything that does not build up or in fact tears down that reality is in fact an attack on Jesus himself. It is difficult to remember this when we are slighted, ignored, or cut off in traffic. We tend to want to push back in anger, to extract what we imagine to be justice for ourselves. But we must be careful to avoid vengeance or violence, lest we find ourselves persecuting Jesus himself. It is too easy for us to neglect Jesus in the poor, failing to do the good we could do. It is too easy for us to forget his presence in our enemies and instead respond to them by doing evil instead of showing mercy. But this will not be the case if we learn to recognize Jesus in disguise. We can indeed learn more and more to reverence and love him in our brothers and sisters, especially in the lowest and the least.
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
I am the LORD.
We can't even begin to love ourselves properly until we first experience the Lord's love for us. He loves us unto our true end, eternal life together with him. This love helps us order our own loves toward that end, and teaches us to love our brothers and sisters in ways that are ultimately helpful rather than destructive. But it all must begin with an encounter with Jesus himself wherein we learn to recognize him, Jesus as happened to Paul on the road to Damascus. How can we seek such an encounter in our own day? Saint Teresa of Calcutta offered her own advice:
If we recognize [him] under the appearance of bread, she explained, we will have no difficulty recognizing him in the disguise of the suffering poor.- Saint Teresa of Calcutta
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