One with God, Creation, and One Another
We are asked in Baptism: Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself? Once you experience this – seeing the Christ in one person – it then becomes easy to see Christ in “all persons.” This is what storyteller Matthew imagines what the Day of the Lord, or the Day of Judgment, will look like (Matt 25:31-46). Whether or not we recognize Christ in others, there he is right in front of us in all these poor, forgotten, marginalized people he is talking about serving. As you feed the hungry, you are feeding Christ, whether you recognize him or not. It’s what the ancient Celts were getting at by seeing and talking about the Oneness of us all; the Oneness of all creation! People must have experienced this in Christ, in Jesus. He was capable of seeing no distinctions among different people.
There is a possible translation problem It says “all,” pantes, “nations,” ethne. Which is possible. Yet, biblical documents written in Greek, ethne more often is used to translate the Hebrew goyim, or Gentiles. Broadly, gentile simply means non-Jewish. Matthew writing after the time of the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, gentile would also include non-Christians as well. This markedly changes how we might read this passage. And perhaps explains why both groups, those who serve those in need and those who don’t, neither is looking for Christ, nor do they recognize Christ. Despite Jesus declaring his Oneness with all those who are poor and disinherited.
One of the first times I saw the face of Christ in another human being was in a movie called, Excuse Me, America, featuring Dom Helder Camara, Archbishop of Olinda and Recife, in North-East Brazil. In the movie he comes to America and meets with Dorothy Day, Mother Theresa, Caesar Chavez and others who, like himself in Brazil, worked for dignity and justice for all people – most especially the poor. Near the end of the movie Dom Helder is at an organizing meeting for the farmworkers in California, the crowd is singing We Shall Overcome, and the camera zooms in on Dom Helder’s face. With a beatific smile on his face, tears streaming down as he listens to the singing of the poor farmworkers, I could only see the Transfiguration of Christ. It was then that I instantly knew what he means when he says, “Although for some people it may appear strange, I declare that here in the North-East Christ is called Jose, Antonio, Severino, Maria, Ana, Fernanda. Ecce Homo! Here is Christ the human. The human being who needs justice, has the right to justice, deserves justice.” [i]
It's important to know that Dom Helder’s life-long campaign on behalf of the poor everywhere met official resistance within the church. Yet, it was his deep understanding of this imagining of The Final Judgment in Matthew 25 that kept him true to serving the Christ in all humanity. Even his love of those who fought him in his quest for justice for all.
Ever since, it has been my experience that those who practice the most devoted service to others have always been the most Christ-like persons I have ever met. And in every instance, they would be the last people to even think that they were Christ-like in any way – which, of course, makes their service to others, especially the poor and disinherited, even more Christ-like. As Dom Helder also says “He [Christ] said, whoever is suffering, humiliated, crushed is he. In our own time, when more than two-thirds of the human race are living in sub-human conditions, it’s easy enough to meet him in the flesh…For my part I am as sure of Christ’s existence as I am of my own hand with its five fingers I can touch and see. I meet Jesus every day. And we are one. No doubt about it.” [ii] I meet Jesus every day. No doubt about it.
We call this Christ the King Sunday – and yet our Lord and King is best seen among those who are hungry, thirsty, in jail, naked, sick, and strangers in the land. It’s a very different kind of King whose kingdom is realized among those who serve those most desperately in need. Those who serve, as Matthew tells it, do not seem to recognize the Christ in those they serve, and least of all in themselves. They are not necessarily Christians, or Jews, or of any other religious practice.
I believe Matthew’s Jesus challenges the Church itself. He seems to say: If these Gentiles, non-Christians, non-Jews, know how to love God and love neighbor without ever hearing my teaching, how much more must our community of Christ be so directed in all that we say and all that we do? There is no other reason we are here.
Before we, or any church, says or does anything at all, it is paramount that we recognize this mystical Oneness that Dom Helder lived and breathed all of his 90 years among us. It is utterly freeing to abandon the natural tendency to focus on our differences and those dimensions of “self” that divide us, and to focus wholeheartedly on our inherent Oneness. It changes everything. Those in power, those who wield power, want us to believe life is about fighting for all we can get – individually, and as a nation. It’s every man, woman and child for themselves. This is what is most often recognized as kingdoms and empires: grabbing for ourselves the land and the resources of others for our own consumption. Many of the parables of Jesus recognize this as human sin. Instead, Jesus advocates a reversal, a turning of the world right-side up again! And people like Dom Helder, Dorothy Day, Caesar Chavez, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Joan Baez and countless others throughout the centuries have worked for such a just and dignified society, with or without any personal knowledge of Christ – just like the folks in our vision of the Final Judgment who ask, “When did we see you naked, hungry, thirsty, sick and in prison?”
We do well to remember just how this feast of The Solemnity of our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe came to be. Pope Pius XI, writing in the aftermath of World War I, noted that while there had been a cessation of hostilities, there was no true peace. He deplored the rise of class divisions, unbridled nationalism, and a world that was being gripped by anti-Semitic and authoritarian-fascist dictators. He felt the church, of all institutions, needed to return to being icons of Christ – those who day in and day out see Christ in all persons, respecting the dignity of every human being. We must ask just how important this vision of Pius is for our time?
Oscar Romero, Archbishop of El Salvador, in a homily on March 24, 1980, in a small hospital chapel said, “God’s reign is already present on our earth in mystery. When the Lord comes, it will be brought to perfection. That is the hope that inspires Christians. We know that every effort to better society, especially when injustice and sin are so ingrained, is an effort that God blesses, that God wants, that God demands of us.” [iii] Minutes later, while celebrating the Eucharist, Romero was shot down by government assassins. For serving the poor, the destitute, the disinherited. For living a Christ-like life. For seeing Christ every day in the poor he served. May we ponder the symmetry: November begins with All Saints and ends with Christ the King.
[i]
Hall, Mary, The Impossible Dream: The Spirituality of Dom Helder Camara (Orbis
Books, Maryknoll, NY:1980) from his Inaugural Address, quoted on p.75
[ii]
McDonagh, Francis, Dom Helder Camara: Essential Writings, (Orbis Books,
Maryknoll, NY:2009) p.120
[iii]
Brockman, James R., SJ, The Violence of Love: Oscar Romero (Orbis Books,
Maryknoll, NY: 1988) p.206
No comments:
Post a Comment