Love-Hate Relationships

I would guess that most of you know what a love-hate relationship is. If we find ourselves in this kind of relationship with a person, we know that we have a very strange attitude towards that other person. We both hate and love that other person. We might be very attracted to him or her and feel that we could not live without them. But, at the same time, we might resent how that person treats us. We feel both love and hate directed to the same person.

I would hazard a guess that many of us have that kind of relationship with today's gospel reading. We are both attracted to this story and yet, at the same time, we secretly fear or hate it. As we hear the first part of the gospel where the King is rewarding people for taking care of those in need, we feel satisfied and happy with ourselves as we think of the good things we have done.

But when we hear the second part of the gospel where the King is condemning people, we find ourselves growing very uneasy because we are afraid that we may also fall into that category. How many chances for doing good did we pass by? Will those times of neglect outweigh the times when we responded to the needs of others? How does it all work, we say?

Doing the Best

If we follow a very basic guideline, we won't have any need to live in fear that our neglect will outweigh the good we have done. Whenever we find ourselves face-to-face with a person in need, we must respond to that person as best we can. At times, we will not be able to fill the empty hearts or empty stomachs of everyone we meet. But we can be at peace if we know that we have reached deep within ourselves, and offered the best we have to those in need.

We all have different capacities to love and to give. Each of us needs to be aware of our limitations, but we also need to be aware of our possibilities. At times, we sell ourselves short, thinking that we can't do very much in this world to help make things better. That's a thought we need to get rid of at the first opportunity. Every single person, no matter how limited in intellectual, emotional or financial resources, has something unique to give. We all have something we can offer to some other person who has some unique need to receive our special gift.

It would be hard to overemphasize how important today's gospel is. If every one of us read this gospel each day of our lives and allowed it to enter deeply into our hearts, life would be different. If you have been wondering how you can grow in the life of the Spirit, just take today's gospel, write it out and put it somewhere where you will see it every day-read it often-reflect on it-let it become a part of you-allow it to be your guide as you go about your day-to-day business. If you allow it to change your life, it will.

The King is Among Us

But let's not focus entirely on ourselves. Today is the feast of Christ the King. Jesus wants to be a good King to us, not merely one who sits on a heavenly throne far off, gazing down at us in our need and stupidity. A good King is one who knows his people, and who can be found among his people. And so it is with Jesus. Jesus so identifies himself with us in our infinite needs that he has made our needs into the way in which we can come face-to-face with him. Every time we meet a person in need, (and who is not in need?), we meet Christ.

When God took on human flesh in the person of Jesus, it wasn't just so that a few thousand people who lived at the time of Jesus could see him face-to-face. When God took on human flesh, God was giving us the gift of a real presence. And this presence of God didn't disappear when Jesus ascended into heaven. We, as the Body of Christ, have been given the awesome task of bringing Christ to one another.

When Jesus proclaimed: "Just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me," he was saying that he would be always with us in the human presence of one another. You and I actually bring Jesus Christ to one another. And we don't do this just symbolically or as a representative of Jesus. Jesus has given us the power to be his real presence. That's why we can't afford to neglect one another. When we neglect one another, we neglect Jesus himself.

This has very deep consequences for the way in which we live each day. If we find ourselves not giving any real attention to the needs of our marriage partner, our children, our parents, our friends, our neighbors, our Church family, our co-workers, then we are neglecting Jesus. The good news is that we can meet Jesus every day of our lives by giving ourselves in kindness and love to those who are a daily part of our lives.