A Reflection for the Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Readings: Amos 8:4-7 1 Timothy 2:1-8 Luke 16:1-13
Have you ever thought that you have seen Christ? Not in an extraordinary vision, but in daily life? Of course, you were mistaken, but in a way, the Gospel seems to envision that we will encounter him. Indeed, this is the point of being his follower: seeing Christ when he is not there.
Here’s an example. Serving as a war correspondent in the Spanish American War, Stephen Crane recorded this scene from a field hospital at El Caney in Cuba:
Pushing through the throng in the plaza we came in sight of the door of the church, and here was a strange scene. The church had been turned into a hospital for Spanish wounded who had fallen into American hands. The interior of the church was too cavelike in its gloom for the eyes of the operating surgeons, so they had the altar-table carried to the doorway, where there was bright light. Framed then in the black archway was the altar-table with the figure of a man upon it. He was naked save for a breech-clout, and so close, so clear was the ecclesiastic suggestion, that one’s mind leaped to a fantasy that this thin pale figure had just been torn down from a cross. The flash of the impression was like light, and for the instant it illumined all the dark recesses of one’s remotest ideas of sacrilege, ghastly and wanton.
Of course, Stephen Crane did not see Christ. He saw a wounded Spanish soldier in a scene, which obviously evoked the death of Jesus. But Crane shared the incident to say that, in a way, he had indeed seen Christ, then and there, as one more of the world’s wounded in our midst.
I bring this to you merely as an effect—an effect of mental light and shade, if you like; something done in thought similar to that which the French Impressionists do in color; something meaningless and at the same time overwhelming, crushing, monstrous.
The prophet Amos did not preach Christianity, but he did proclaim two great truths Christ revealed to us. First, everything we are and everything we have is a gift. Second: Others stand in need. To ignore the poor is not only to ignore the living God; it is a very sad way of acting as though we were God.
Hear this, you who trample upon the needy
and destroy the poor of the land!
Amos chides us for failing to see in the poor, the God who created us.
“When will the new moon be over,” you ask,
“that we may sell our grain,
and the sabbath, that we may display the wheat?
We will diminish the ephah,
add to the shekel,
and fix our scales for cheating!
We will buy the lowly for silver,
and the poor for a pair of sandals;
even the refuse of the wheat we will sell!”
The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob:
Never will I forget a thing they have done!
Perhaps simply rephrasing our Christian understanding of the world brings Amos’ indictment into focus for us. To say that we have a creator means that we recognize that the world does not revolve around ourselves. We did not give it existence; we do not sustain it; the world does not exist for us. In short, our world is a gift.
if we do not attend to the poor, we neither recognize nor love God.
To say that we should see the creator God in the faces of the poor is really to recognize that, because everything has been given to us, including our own selves, the only way to respond adequately to the unseen giver is to imitate him. To give something of ourselves away, freely. And what else do we have to give but our attention and our resources?
Conversely, it can be said that if we do not attend to the poor, we neither recognize nor love God. All the prayers and attention we offer to God mean nothing if we fail to be another Christ. And who is Christ? The revelation of God as the one who gives, who simply pours out the self, even within the mystery of the Trinity’s own life.
God has created this wonderful world, but it is a world in want. Do you regularly contribute to your local Catholic charity, Catholic Relief Services, or to some other charity that serves the poor? How can you say that you recognize and reverence God if you do not respond to those who stand in want?
Stephen Crane’s senses were deceived, but not his heart. Christ was on that altar table, naked and bleeding to death. He still is, if we would only open our eyes and look.
