Matthew 25:31 - 46
In my hometown, Helena, Montana, there is a four year college established by the Diocese, named after the second Bishop of Helena, John Patrick Carroll, who was instrumental in founding it. When I was growing up the college was staffed largely by diocesan priests who had gotten advanced degrees in different disciplines. The campus had a dormitory for the priests who were on the faculty. It was an era when there was a real surplus of priests, at least in our diocese.
One of the priests, Father Vince Hartman, a history professor, passed away during my teen years. His picture was in the paper along with his obituary. Helena was not a big city, and still isn’t, but it did have a section known for a concentration of sleazy bars and people who drank a lot and didn’t bathe often. After Father Hartman died, several of these individuals realized that this was the same man who would show up late at night, sit down next to someone on a bar stool, buy himself a beer and offer to buy a drink for the other guy. They would talk about the weather, sports -- whatever came to mind. Eventually Father would admit to being hungry and offer to buy his companion a sandwich as well. Over several years many people came to know this stranger who would show up unannounced and pick someone out of the crowd to share a drink, a sandwich and some conversation. And that was it. No obvious conversions, no preaching or reprimanding. The other priests on the college faculty were unaware of Father Hartman’s extracurricular adventures. The people in the bad section of town were unaware that a priest was dropping in on them. Father Hartman left the remainder of his money to the St. Vincent de Paul society, which worked with the homeless and the marginal people in Helena. I don’t know if he changed any lives. I don’t think that was even his intention. I think he was simply taking Jesus’ words seriously.
You may have seen a picture of the statue of “homeless Jesus”. It depicts a man sleeping on a park bench under a blanket pulled up to partially obscure the face. His feet stick out from the covering, and you can see the nail wounds. It’s very popular and with the artist’s permission it’s been duplicated all over the world. And it should cause us to stop and think as well. Jesus, after all, doesn’t simply ask us to have pity on people like that; he identifies with people like that. He tells us they are part of his family. Joan and I have a pretty big family, as families go. Six kids, Nineteen grandchildren, three son-in-laws, one daughter-in-law. If I hear that something good has happened to one of them, I am happy, much more so than if I hear something good has happened to a stranger or a person who is not a relative. It’s kind of a natural thing, I guess. And likewise, if someone treats one of our descendants badly, I feel it as well, and I am angry with the person who did this. And I’m just a flawed, imperfect human being.
But that’s what Jesus is talking about. He identifies with his family; much more so than I identify with members of mine. He identifies so strongly that he says what you do for the least, you do for him -- and vice versa. And notice, he is not saying what you have to believe; he is not leaving room for “spiritualizing” his words. I don’t even think he’d be content with our contributions to charity, even sizable ones, not that that isn’t a good thing. But in today’s gospel he’s telling us that he is that man trying to sleep on a park bench, he is the woman pushing a shopping cart with all her belongings down main street; he is the man at the bar settling down for another evening of lonely drinking; he is that woman in the nursing home who hopes the phone will ring and there will be a few minutes she can forget about her loneliness.
We Christians talk about a relationship with Jesus. We pray that we will grow closer, that we will experience his friendship. Some of us find his presence in the Eucharist, in the proclamation of scripture, in the companionship of the assembly, and that’s all well and good. But I wonder if Father Hartman had learned something more, and his nocturnal visits to the bars in Helena were really to experience the presence and fellowship of Jesus himself, who told us where we could find him-- among the least of his brethren.
