Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me

I saw a quote today from St. John Bosco (allegedly, one can never be 100% certain with these facebook things) that said, “It is not enough to love the children, it is necessary that they are aware that they are loved.”

On the same day I read this quote from Sr. Faustina:

“God's mercy sometimes touches the sinner at the last moment in a wondrous and mysterious way. Outwardly, it seems as if everything were lost, but it is not so. The soul, illumined by a ray of God's powerful, final grace, turns to God in the last moment with such a power of love that, in an instant, it receives from God forgiveness of sins and punishment, while outwardly it shows no signs either of repentance or contrition, because souls [at that stage] no longer react to external things. Oh, how beyond comprehension is God's mercy! (Diary, 1698).”

At the same time I was reading the book, “Not For Sale,” by David Batstone on one of my lifelong obsessions, the protection and care of abused, exploited or neglected children. Many of the activists, or abolitionists as he prefers to call them, emphasized the primary need of these children being the need to be loved.

It is a pattern that I have noticed in my life, that sometimes a number of different sources will all speak to me about the same thing at the same time. I try to pay attention to such things. The skeptic in me assumes that on some subconscious level I am looking for connections, and creating significance from random events. The man of faith in there somewhere likes to think that God is trying to speak to me.

(Oh, and Matthew 18:1-14 was emailed to me by my "Gospels in a year" subscription.)

 

There is a deep connection between the three sources above, which speaks to me very deep within my heart. There is a passage from 1 John 4:20 which I am fond of “misquoting.” The verse reads “Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.” I often misquote it saying, “How can anyone believe in the love of the God whom they have not seen if they have never known the love of the brother they can see.”

You see, I often think about all the children who will never know love. Most of them will probably end up dead, or as petty criminals, or perhaps not so petty. One has to wonder how much love was known in the Bin Laden or Hussein households, or the Stalin or Hitler households when those infamous men were growing up. I think also of the men who are not criminals, but who nevertheless take part in the subjugation, mutilation or sexual exploitation of women out of sheer ignorance. That is what they saw their fathers doing, that is all they know about manhood.

This is not a statement or even a speculation about their subjective guilt. On this level guilt or innocence is not of very much concern to me. My cousin and I were talking about C. S. Lewis the other day and he mentioned the hope that C. S. Lewis died in perfect intellectual honesty about his faith, given that he chose not to become Catholic. I countered that whether or not his intellectual honesty was perfect he died in need of mercy as we all will. The same is true of rapists, murderers, dictators and abusers. There is no human being who does not need mercy, and there is no person to whom mercy will not be offered at the moment of death. The question is whether or not we will be able to recognize and accept it.

Love can be a frightening thing. Even those who know what love is and have experienced it can very easily come to fear love, to feel unworthy of it, to become so caught up in their unworthiness that they refuse love, run away from it, deny it when it is offered. The technical word for that state of mind is “despair,” and a little imagination reveals it as not too far removed from pride.

Now imagine a terrible sinner, a crack whore who has been selling her body for drugs, who has aborted several of her own children and witnessed others of her children spiral into the same black pit she has lived in, raped and pimped by her boyfriends, starving, addicted, despairing, worse than dead. Lest you think that I am engaging in sensationalism, I am not. I am describing women that I have seen and treated, that my fiancée has seen and treated, and if you live in any major city in America I am describing your neighbor who lives within a few miles of you. I could as easily have described Pol Pot or St. Augustine or myself for all the difference it would have made.

This woman will die someday. In the moment of her death she will see God, and be exposed to pure, unadulterated love. As much as she may have loathed herself before, she will immediately see her sinfulness in all its ugliness, and if I may trust my own inclination, she will likely be overwhelmed with sorrow. The next question will be what she does with that sorrow. Will she recognize unconditional love and accept it, allow it to wash her clean, embrace it, even rejoice in her cleansing?

Will I be able to rejoice in my own shame, simply for the sake of the glory of God, for the opportunity it provides for Him to show His mercy?

I think that transition will be easier for those who have seen love. A few days ago in prayer with my fiancée (via video chat, which is an experience in and of itself) we prayed for those children who have never known love, that they would be shown enough love in their lives so that at the very end when God shows Himself they will recognize love. It will not be a total shock.

I suppose that is the whole purpose of human love.

What I did not realize until writing this last sentence is that in doing so we accomplished on some level what we were praying for. We loved them. I doubt they know that now, or knew it at the moment of our prayer (although you never know) but someday I have faith that they will know that they were loved even when they didn’t know it.

A Prophet's Reward

The Bible Study that I am a part of in Tacoma is a very successful Bible Study, as Bible Studies go. The reasons for this are simple, but effective. It is at a regular place and at a regular time every week, (Monday at 7:30 P.M. Panera Bread, Tacoma Mall.) It is led by an extremely passionate and dynamic woman with a strong knack for names, faces and stories and a powerful love of Jesus. The core is a group of very close friends who have been going there for years, and a few new arrivals like myself who have sort of been adopted into the group. Finally, it has a very simple and effective format. Every meeting starts off at 7:30-45-ish (whenever the Filipinos show up) with introductions and the question of the day, which can be anything from "What was the most memorable spiritual experience of your life," to "What was your worst ever haircut, and how did you end up with it?"

After that we pray and begin the actual Bible study portion. The plan is very simple. We read the readings of the day, meditate on them, and then discuss them. At about nine we do announcements and then go to Red Robin for bottomless fries, root beer (or real beer for the 21 or over) floats, and burgers.

Simple, but it works. I should do a Thugfang post about Bible studies sometime, but that isn't what I set out to write about. It was a bit of a digression. I set out to write about one of the thoughts that came out of discussion from last week.

The Gospel from last Monday was Matthew 10:34 - 11:1. Of course there are enough passages in that gospel to spend hours and hours meditating and discussing, but in the interests of keeping this a blog and not a book, I just want to focus on the one line that struck me most powerfully, "Whoever receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and whoever receives a righteous man because he is righteous will receive a righteous man’s reward." Matthew 10:41.

At first glance this seems unfair. All you have to do to earn a prophet's reward is find yourself a prophet and offer him some hospitality. You don't even have to be one yourself, which is a pretty sweet deal considering all the ostracism, shunning, stoning and whatnot that goes along with it. As my younger brother said, "Well, if that's the case, sign me up. Come on, all you prophets, free hospitality right here!"

Which is exactly what I would say myself.

On a deeper level, this passage challenges a good many of my deep set notions of what religion, salvation, and heaven are all about. I mean, I had always thought that there are levels of reward in Heaven. Each person rises to the level that he opens himself to. The more spiritually developed you become on earth, the more room you have for heaven, so to speak. The priest has a higher vocation than the layman. He gives more, and as a result he is emptier and has more room to be filled with joy.

This is an overly simplistic way of putting it.This passage tells me that in reality it is not so simple, or maybe it is simpler, but not in the same way. Of course everyone must be completely empty before they can enter the Kingdom. Some choose that emptiness as a way of life, and I had assumed that they would have a head start when they got to the pearly gates, but maybe that is not the case.

When I read this passage it reminded me of Mother Teresa. She started the order, the Missionaries of Charity, whom she described as contemplatives in the midst of the world. That is, their charism is both to develop the deep, intimate relationship with God which we would associate with a contemplative order, and also to engage in active service for the poorest of the poor. They are known for their work throughout the world, and I assume that Mother Teresa has a very high place in Heaven. Not that she earned it, per se, but that by the evidence of her life I can only assume that she had an unusually close and deep and rich relationship with God.

What a lot of people do not know is that Mother Teresa also started another group, which she envisioned as being as large as the MC itself, sort of an auxiliary MC. There were two groups, really. One was composed of terminally or chronically ill people, people who could not leave their beds, who could not lead an active life. Their mission was to "adopt" a Missionary of Charity, and to offer up for them all of their prayers and sufferings and the frustrated desires of their lives. The other group was composed of lay people, man, women, children, families, lawyers, businessmen, blue collar workers, teachers, just your ordinary everyday people. Their job was very similar, to adopt spiritually a Missionary of Charity. In addition they were to support them financially in their work through donations, volunteer work, whatever they could.

Both of these "auxiliary" groups seemed to be working the lesser missions on face value. The Missionary of Charity sister or brother or priest is out in the field, doing the real missions. They are the ones going out into the gutters and streets, touching the lepers, smelling the rotting flesh, witnessing all the horror of poverty and degradation. The two other groups are no doubt useful in their way, but really, aren't they just glorified ammo handlers, in the spiritual sense? Sitting at home, passing spiritual ammunition to the real spiritual warriors? How will they get a "holy man's" reward simply because they supported a holy man?

But that is not Mother Teresa saw it. She did not view them as supports for MC's work. Instead they and the missionaries were simply support for God's work, each tools in the hand of God, which He used as He saw fit. It was not the task that they were called to do it, but how freely and lovingly they did it which mattered. She said, "No one can do great things for Jesus. Only little things with great love." This from the woman who saved countless thousands of people from dying alone, friendless and despairing in the gutters and the slums around the world.

This is what I think Jesus meant in this passage. It is not the task that matters. The prophet's task may be higher than the bricklayer's task, but that does not mean that his reward is greater. Reward is not determined by task, since task is given by God, not earned by merits. The only possible thing that could be rewarded is response. The more wholeheartedly we open ourselves to the task that God gives us, the more we allow Him to empty us, stretch us, and fill us with Himself. That is the reward, as much of God as we can hold.

And this is how a man who gives a prophet a glass of water because he is a prophet can receive the prophet's reward because of it. It all depends on how much love goes into that glass of water.