Ignacio (Nacho) Martin Baro (1942-1989)
Today is the last day of the year on the church’s calendar, and so the gospel speaks about the end times. Our thoughts turn to more ultimate things, ultimate in the sense of having utmost importance. Thoughts about how to measure a life, how to know whether it is successful or not.
It’s like what happens when someone approaches the end of their own individual life. They get a clarity about what is most important. Things that might have once mattered matter no longer. What is most important--for example, the love of family and friends--now becomes very clear; other things fall away.
Sometimes it’s good to look at our own context in which we are hearing the days’ gospel. This year we have a special context for hearing this particular gospel passage, for thinking these ultimate thoughts. I’m aware of three things going on at this moment in the world and in my own heart.
- For one thing, the grand jury in Ferguson is about to announce their verdict in the case of the officer who killed Michael Brown. That verdict that will have broad implications for all of us Americans but especially for the many young brown and black people whose lives too often don’t matter within our larger American culture.
- Secondly, last week, the President removed the fear of deportation from 5 million undocumented immigrants. It was a bold move on his part, and a hard-won victory for immigrants after hundreds of thousands of parents had been torn from their children. Still, it leaves 6 million people still under threat of deportation, including our immigrant LGBT sisters and brothers who remain particularly vulnerable.
- Something else is going on as well, perhaps more personal to me. Last Sunday was the anniversary of the death of a friend of mine. I’ve been thinking of him all week. His name was Nacho. He was a Jesuit priest teaching at the University in San Salvador. Every Friday after he finished his classes, he would travel to one of the poorest barrios outside of town to offer the Eucharist and minister to the people there. Twenty-five years ago last Sunday, early in the morning, several armed soldiers raided the University where Nacho was teaching, dragged him, his fellow priests along with their housekeeper and her daughter into a small garden area and shot and killed them. They did this because Nacho and and the other Jesuits had given themselves heart and soul to the poor of that country who in those days were being rounded up and massacred left and right.
These are just a few parts of our context as we listen to this morning’s gospel, as we try to reconnect once more with the things that matter most in lives.
And, of course, what matters most is love. “In the evening, we will be examined on love,” St. John of the Cross once wrote. In the end, it won’t matter how much money you made, or the color of your skin. It won’t matter whether you looked like Miss America or Groucho Marx. The only thing that will matter is whether you tried to love with all your heart.
When I was hungry, Jesus will ask each of us, did you feed me? When I was thirsty, did you give me to drink? When I was naked, did you clothe me, or sick or in prison and visit me? When I was a stranger, an immigrant, did you welcome me?
These are the kinds of things we must do, what we each try to do. But notice: There is nothing uniquely Christian about them; all people with good hearts do these things whether they are Christian or not.
Still, I think there’s something unique about the way we Christians do them. After watching how Jesus lives and moves through the gospels, after spending time with him in prayer, after drinking in what we can of his Spirit, we come to do these good things in a uniquely Christian way. There’s a unique quality to the way the Spirit of Jesus goes about these good things.
For one thing, there’s a lack of calculation. jesus cautions us not to be like the goats. They’re the ones who say, “Lord, had we known it was you, we would have responded. But all we saw were these poor folks, some of them not looking not very well put together, some of them strangers who can’t speak English, some who don’t smell very good, some with criminal records. Why exactly would we want anything to do with them?”
There’s a Wall Street kind of calculation going on here: I’ll do this to get something in exchange. I’ll invest my time and energy and money caring for someone if it will yield me a good return of one kind or another--if not money, then perhaps some recognition or influence.
So the goats say, “If we had known it was Jesus, we would have responded--because we would have gotten something out of it: a place in the kingdom, a ticket to heaven. But to us, these folks didn’t look anything like Jesus. They just looked like just run-of-the-mill needy people, the kind who can’t repay us. So we did nothing for them.”
So goes the thinking of the goats with their quid-pro-quo calculations that constrict their hearts and short-circuit their love.
The sheep are not like this. They don’t calculate. No quid pro quo. They see people in need--people hungry, in prison, sick, people who are strangers, and they respond. They don’t even know that all along they are doing these things for Jesus. In fact they’re surprised to find that out at the end. Quite simply, they had seen people hurting and in need and so they responded. It’s very simple and pure, the way love is supposed to be.
Be like the sheep, Jesus is urging here. Love with his Spirit.
When Jesus sees a man with a withered hand, he doesn’t stop to do various mental gymnastics, asking whether it’s appropriate to heal on the sabbath, wondering how it will play out among the religious leaders if he were to heal the man’s hand. No, he simply sees this man in pain and he responds, he heals him.
And when Jesus comes upon a leper, one of the outcasts of his day, he doesn’t stop to consider what all the purity codes dictate and what the onlookers might be thinking. No, he just reaches out his hand and touches this man, this leper who probably had not been touched by anyone in years.
Simple. Pure. How love is supposed to be. Without calculation. It’s how Jesus does things.
There’s another unique way the Spirit of Jesus goes about feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and visiting the imprisoned. It does these things without calling attention to itself.
When the religious hypocrites of Jesus’ day did good things, they would blow trumpets, stand on street corners, look glum so everyone would know they were doing some noble and heavy stuff. We may not be quite as dramatic as they, but we can certainly understand the need to be recognized, have our good actions noticed and applauded.
But when the Spirit of Jesus is at work in our actions, the need to gab about our accomplishments is not as strong as the need to be thankful for the grace that enables us, has caught us up and moves us along.
The other day after watching the President’s speech on immigration, I was complimenting a young Latina for the amazing work she had been doing for immigration reform. She said, “It’s all because of my mom who was always there for me and never lost faith that one day I could have a better life if she brought me to this country.” No need to promote herself or her abilities. She knew that what she did was enabled and supported by a grace from outside herself.
Years from now, when I get to heaven, I can imagine running into my friend Nacho. And if I ask him how he managed to end up in his cool new heavenly home, my hunch is he’ll say, “Well, I just tried to love everybody I could, freely, without calculation, and it was no big deal.”
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