by Paul O'Reilly, SJ
"As much as you did it to the least of these little ones, you did it to me."
At the end of time, we will be judged.
And we will not be judged on the basis of what we thought, or what we believed, or whether or not we read the Bible. We will be judged on how we acted -- in particular, how we acted towards the least of these little ones.
Who are they, "the least of these little ones"?
Jesus pointed to them in His own Time.
Who are they now in our time and in our community?
Who are the most needy people that I know and meet?
Each of us will have our own individual answers to that question.
Each of us has a different calling.
But, as I prayed over this passage and examined my own
conscience on this question, there came to my mind the image of the
most miserable place I have ever been. It was the AIDS ward at the
public hospital in a country in South America ; a ward specially set
aside for the care of people who were dying of AIDS.
When I visited there twenty years ago, the place was dreadful:
filthy, infested with rats and running with dirty water down the
walls. There was an open sewer running past the window. The smell
was dreadful. There were no medicines, no clean water, hardly any
food, hardly any trained nurses or doctors. I once heard one of the
patients ask a nurse for an antibiotic for his chest infection. He
was told, "We're not wasting that on some one like you. You're going
to die anyway." That's the worst thing I ever heard anyone say to another human
being.
Those patients were the most deprived people I have ever known. They
lay two to a bed, without clothes, without sheets, without dignity,
without self-respect, without hope. They were close to dying in
pain:
- the pain of ulcers where the skin had broken down over the skeleton.
- the pain of the dreadful hacking cough of the tuberculosis eating out their lungs.
- But worst of all, the pain of dying alone, almost always abandoned by their family and one time friends.
I learned from them that when you have been deprived of
everything, what you miss the most is human companionship. Mount Street Jesuit Centre,
If there was any joy at all in their lives, it came from a little
old nun who used to visit with a little food, a little clothing;
some soap, some towels. She herself admitted that very often she
could do very little to help. But she said that at least she tried.
She told me that she hoped that at the very least no one would die
without feeling they had been touched - even if only once and
briefly - with the Love of Christ. It was to that hope that she was
devoting the last few declining years of her life.
I am sure some of you here will have seen the film -- "One flew over
the cuckoo's nest". It is a parable of the triumph of one free human
spirit over the most degrading and repressive regime that its author
could imagine. Even in such a place, one man has the courage, the
faith, the sheer bloody-mindedness to try to escape. He fails,
humiliatingly. But, as he shouts to the other less courageous
inmates, "At least I bloody tried!"
Let us each for a moment reflect on the many people we will meet in
the course of the coming week -- all the people we will touch. And
let us pray that we may touch each and every one of them with the
Touch of Christ.
We live in a world that has some great evils -- suffering,
injustice, disease and despair. It is in that world that God has
placed us with, as we heard last week, all the talents that He has
given us for service to His People. God does not expect to do
miracles, but he does expect us to do our best. So, when we come up
before him, separating the sheep from the goats, let us at least be
able to say that -- according to our lights -- at least we bloody
tried.
Let us stand and profess our Faith in God, the Father of all
Mercies.
114 Mount Street,
London SW1K 3AH.
ENGLAND.
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