For me, today, you are Jesus Christ

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart...and your neighbour as yourself.”   Is that two commandments or one? In this story of the Good Samaritan who risked his life to save someone else who was in need, we can see Jesus himself who came down from heaven to save the life of you and me and the entire human race, when we lie injured on the side of our path. The people of importance pass by, the priest and the Levite, the politicians and thinkers and military men of the whole of history, and fill their minds with excuses as to why they can’t make things better, but the Samaritan, the foreigner, stops and lifts the injured, beaten man on to his mule. What makes the difference is not the fact that he is a foreigner but that he has compassion: he has a heart. And that is what makes the difference with Jesus, why he comes down from heaven to save us, himself being attacked by the bandits and murdered. He has a heart. So, is loving our neighbour and loving God two commandments or one? It is one, since God made himself our neighbour, and it is also one because when a person acts with compassion they become like God.

Fr. Kevin Scallon wrote once about an experience he had in Africa where he met a woman who, uninvited, began to tell him a long, sad, story and then asked him for some clothes and food. When she received them she put them down on the ground and started to dance. Fr. Kevin didn’t know what she was doing that for. Eventually, half annoyed, he asked her if she believed in Jesus Christ and she said to him words to remember, “For me, today, you are Jesus Christ.”

The world is a road filled with bandits where people easily get beaten up. Sometimes it does not require much to remind people that there is another way and a better way. By the example of his own life, prolonged in the love which we can feel emanating from the Blessed Sacrament, Jesus teaches us that there is another way to that of selfishness. It means that people will want to say to us, “For me, today, you are Jesus Christ.”

Fr. Terence Crotty OP