In 2018, I was asked to write a chapter in a book by a group of Living Faith writers called, “Scripture Passages that Changed My Life.” In reflecting back on my life, I landed pretty quickly on the teaching of Jesus that culminates in Matthew 25:40 — “Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of the least brothers of mine, you did for me.”
Here’s a shorter version of what I wrote for the book, and I think it’s a good summation of my understanding of social justice and Catholic social teaching that I developed as a young adult and how it influenced me for the rest of my life:
I first became enthralled by this verse as a teenager watching the movie version of the musical Godspell. As the character of Jesus tells this parable of the final judgement and separates the sheep from the goats (his disciples down on all fours baa-ing and looking lost) my eyes were fixed on those poor goats. They were being directed to the left because they had failed to recognize Jesus in their encounters with those in need. Taken aback by this command to love even the strangers among us, one of them says to Jesus in a sultry voice, “If we’d known it was you, we’d have taken you around the corner for a cup of coffee!” And that, for me, became a lifetime challenge. Well of course, if I’d known it was you, Jesus…
Admittedly, when I first began to let these verses sink into me, I was focused not on verse 40 but on the very similar verse that ends the parable in verse 45: “Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.” There’s a big difference between those two verses, although they differ by just a few words. I was worried about what I might not do or recognize. I was afraid of being the goat during the final judgement. I was more concerned about letting Jesus down than I was encouraged to serve others. The idea frightened me and the story stuck with me.
My understanding of the story of sheep and goats deepened and widened over time. My full appreciation of the interconnectedness of faith and the care for others began to shift and evolve — a movement from fear to love. Seeing Jesus in “the least of these” became less a foreboding and forewarning of standing before Jesus to be judged and more the starting point for my understanding of human love, charity, everyday kindness, and justice.
Jesus’ parable reflects the “mitzvah of hospitality” as found in Isaiah 58, outlining for us the corporal acts of mercy, the care and feeding of the lives and bodies of those around us. Jesus certainly knew what was written in Isaiah and was teaching his followers what he had learned from childhood — feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, visit the sick, visit the imprisoned, and bury the dead.
Matthew 25 has led me to at least try to understand what it means to be the other and the outcast. It allowed me to see the world and those in it with a different set of eyes. I was able to move from, “I wonder what they did (or didn’t do) to get in that position” to “that could be Jesus right in front of me, there on the street corner begging for coins.”
I started to see the world and its problems not as the result of people’s faults, actions and inactions, but as vast and great opportunities to practice charity and — ultimately and more importantly — to work for justice. For both charity and justice are necessary as we take up the corporal works of mercy. We must be willing to roll up our sleeves and help those in desperate need, and we must be willing to seek justice and social change by working to eradicate the root causes of those problems.
I have learned — with this scripture coursing through my veins — that my response to those in need must stem not from pity but from the deep understanding that the difference between “us” and “them” is a very fine line. It could have been my life that was flooded away [or my house and neighborhood burning], had I lived some place different.
To see Jesus in the faces of those in need is to have our lives transformed by the power of love. To serve the homeless is to embrace the poverty and humanity of the Incarnate Word of God. To care for the sick, injured and diseased is to bind up the wounds of the crucified, bleeding, hurting and human Jesus. To visit the lonely and imprisoned is to walk the way to Golgotha with Jesus, to shoulder the cross for even a few steps and hear the sound of metal on metal and the cries of his mother.
To recognize and embrace the broken in the world is to see Jesus and cling to him. The parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25 is perhaps the great and lasting challenge of our lives. For it is, above all, about loving Christ, loving as Christ loved, and loving others as though they were Christ, all at the same time. “Love me,” Jesus says to us.
Do you listen to podcasts?
As the executive director of the Bridges Foundation, which offers the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola in Everyday life to the St. Louis region and beyond, for the past several years I have served as the host of a video interview series that has now been turned into a podcast. You can check out and subscribe to “Bridges Conversations” at: iTunes, Spotify, or Podbean.
