He’d come home from work, tired. You might say ‘stressed-out.’ He didn’t simply sit down on an easy chair.
He collapsed into it. As usual she
brewed him a cup of tea. As usual she
all-but slammed it onto the table beside him.
As usual, he gave her a feeble grunt of cknowledgement. She had done one of the Corporal Works of
Mercy – hadn’t she? No way! There was
nothing of the ‘rider’ –‘as often as you did this…you did it to me!’ Never, would she have treated Jesus in this
rough, offensive way.
And Jesus would never have used such insulting rudeness when receiving
even the most grudging kindness !
In composing our meditations on the Corporal Works of Mercy we have
become convinced that they are about far more than meeting the physical needs of a human body --
nourishment, clothing, healing, housing.
Works of Mercy must be about one person helping another – with
compassion, sensitivity, respect, love.
. . a wholesome reaching out to the wholeness of another person. Each is
ennobled with a God-given dignity -both the giver and receiver of merciful
kindness.
We would hope that the one who receives kindly consideration would show
a friendly gratitude. In doing any of
the Works of Mercy our attitude should be, 'I'm doing this for you because I
know God wants me to. You're precious
to me because you're precious to God.'
It's all about our having a Christ-like attitudes towards people. This kindles a closeness to them, a reverence for them. Our deep awareness of the loving kindness of
our God, as expressed through the caring ministry of Jesus, should condition us
to have an interest in people, to care about them, have time for them, and even
to take care of them. We must never let
ourselves become like the grumpy woman who had given her husband a cup of tea but nothing of herself - no warmth of
love or friendship.
It was for him to drink it– It was none the sweeter to him, because he had received from her! Nowadays, we have so many ways of short-cutting
acts of kindness... the 'remote mentality' of recruiting someone to deliver our
generosity so as to save us the trouble of taking it ourselves. Providing a service can easily become more
important to us than being a face to face friend, who offers a warm embrace and
engages in some cheerful chatter!
Surely the purpose of our reflecting on the Corporal Works of Mercy has
been that all of us should have become more sensitive, more responsive to the
physical needs that people have. We
should have been inspired to do more for others, to love them more and to treat
them with greater consideration and respect.
We all have the privilege, the dignity, of being Ambassadors for Jesus,
the Divine Physician, the Good
Shepherd. We represent Him. He makes
Himself present to us and through us. Jesus wants us to be the channels of
His loving mercy. Such is our glorious vocation as
followers of Jesus.
~~~~~~~~~~
These reflections on the Corporal Works of Mercy have drawn their
inspiration from the teaching of Jesus on the Last Judgement (Matt. 25). He intends that we should realize that our
Christian Spirituality, our Eternal Salvation, stands or falls on whether we are or are not merciful to those in need.
We owe it to ourselves that we
should hear these words,
"Come, you whom my Father has blessed, take as your heritage
the kingdom prepared for you since the foundation of the world," rather than, "Go away from me, with your curse upon you, to the
eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels."
P.S. Look out for our reflections on the 7 Spiritual Works of
Mercy.
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