Christ is in our midst

The season of Lent is about taking a hard look at who we are, where we are and where we need to go. It’s about achieving metanoia, a transformation of heart derived from repentance, prayer, and sacrifice. With that in mind, these readings make a nice set of bookends as we start our Lenten journey.

First we have the Ten Commandments from Leviticus, the basic law given to Moses. That’s the minimum standard, the baseline, for living a righteous life, so it’s probably a good place to start. Then in Matthew’s Gospel, we get the Final Judgment by Christ at the end of days — “the sheep and the goats” — the measuring stick against which we’ll be judged. It forces us to acknowledge an uncomfortable truth about our faith commitment, because Jesus makes it very plain. It’s not just that He cares for those who are less fortunate — the hungry and thirsty, the stranger and prisoner. Christ tells us he IS them — that each one of the neglected, rejected, outcast and ignored — the “throwaway people” in our society — is in fact Christ himself alive in our midst. And that our Final Judgment will be based on how well we reach out to meet their needs. “Whatever you did for one of the least brothers of mine, you did for me.”

This reading, Matthew 25, is a HARD teaching. In our complex, fast paced world today, we’re constantly bombarded with images of conflict, injustice, outright lies, and morally ambiguous definitions of “truth.” We’ve become numb to images of violence and death in our newscasts, panhandlers on every corner, and refugees and migrants living and dying in squalor. We just want to tune it all out. But as Elie Wiesel, the Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor once wrote:“To remain silent and indifferent is the greatest sin of all.”

Pope Francis, speaking at the first World Day of the Poor said, “In the poor, Jesus knocks on the doors of our heart, thirsting for our love. When we overcome our indifference, and … give of ourselves for the least of his brethren, we are his good and faithful friends, with whom he loves to dwell. We please God by showing love to the hungry and the sick, the stranger and the prisoner, the poor and the abandoned, the suffering who receive no help, the needy who are cast aside. On their faces we can imagine seeing Jesus’ own face; on their lips, even if pursed in pain, we can hear his words: “This is my body.”

Our Last Judgment Gospel today represents the culmination of everything Jesus’ ministry is about. It brings into focus what Jesus has been building toward from the beginning. “Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of the least brothers of mine, you did for me.” Peter Maurin, cofounder of the Catholic Worker Movement in the 1930s, called this Gospel passage the dynamite — the great power — for the Church. And it truly is. This is what we should be about. But he worried that “we have taken the dynamite of the Church, placed it in hermetically sealed containers, and sat on the lids.” Too often I think he’s right.

This passage is the central core of Catholic Social Teaching and — more importantly — it is the very essence of who we are called to be as Christians — how we are called to live our lives and go all in to serve those most in need around us. Writing on today’s Gospel, Bishop Robert Barron said, ”There is something awful about the specificity of these demands. This is not love in the abstract, having affection for “humanity.” It is caring for that person who is homeless, for that person who is ill, for that person who is in prison.” It’s scary. It’s hard. But THAT, my brothers and sisters, is the true path to Lenten metanoia, the prize we seek. We need to get out of our comfort zone, shake off our blinders, seek out, and serve the cast offs around us. Because when we serve THEM, we serve HIM.