Desire of the Everlasting Hills: The World Before and After Jesus (Hinges of History) Read Online Free PDF

least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
    “Then will he say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, with your own curse upon your heads, to the eternal fire prepared for the devil and
his
angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink. I was a stranger and you did not take me in, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and imprisoned and you took no care of me.’
    “They will also reply, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty, a stranger or naked, sick or imprisoned, and did not help you?’
    “He will answer, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
    “Then will they go away to eternal punishment, but the just to eternal life.”
    To this heart-stopping lesson, Matthew adds the frightening comment: “Jesus had now finished all he wanted to say.”
    The Son of Man has become the Ward of all Mankind. Incarnated as the human Jesus of Nazareth, he is after hisresurrection the principle of Jewish Justice itself, incarnated in the person of anyone and everyone who needs our help. It is ironic that some Christians make such a fuss about the elements of theEucharist—bowing before them, kneeling in adoration, because Christ is present in them—but have never bothered to heed these solemn words about the presence of Christ in every individual who is in need. Jesus told us only once (at theLast Supper) that he would be present in the Bread and Wine, but he tells us repeatedly in the gospels that he is always present in the Poor and Afflicted—to whom we should all bow and kneel. It is perverse that some Christians make such a fuss about the bound text of God’s Word, carrying it processionally, holding it with reverence, never allowing it to touch the ground, but have never considered seriously this text of Matthew 25, in the light of which we would always catch God’s Needy before they hit the ground. It sometimes seems that it is to churchpeople in particular—to Christian Pharisees—that these words of Jesus are directed.
    But the first-century churchpeople, the people of the Way, took this lesson with all solemnity. It gave them their constant focus—on the poor and needy. Though this focus will be abandoned soon enough as Christian interest turns in the second century to theological hatred, in the third century to institutional triumphalism, and in the fourth to the deadly gameof power politics, it has remained the focus of a few in every age. “Often, often often, goes the Christ in the stranger’s guise” is the repeated refrain of a medieval Irish poem, “The Rune of Hospitality”; and the figure of Christ in the guise of clowns, beggars, and fools roams the literatures of Europe, the Americas, Africa, Oceania, and even Asia, from the earliest stories and plays of the Christian West to the novels of Shusaku Endo and the films of Federico Fellini. In every age, brothers and sisters of Jesus have come forward to heed the lesson, not leastDorothy Day, the twentieth-century saint of New York and founder of theCatholic Worker movement, who spent her life in service to the hungry and homeless, the displaced and dispossessed, who truly loved every Dostoyevskian idiot who crossed her path, and who once wrote:
    It is no use saying that we are born two thousand years too late to give room to Christ. Nor will those who live at the end of the world have been born too late. Christ is always with us, always asking for room in our hearts.
    But now it is with the voice of our contemporaries that He speaks, with the eyes of store clerks, factory workers, and children that He gazes; with the hands of office workers, slum dwellers, and suburban housewives that He gives. It is with the feet of soldiers and tramps that He walks, and with the heart of anyone in need that He longs for shelter. And giving shelter or food to anyone who asks for it, or needs it, is giving it to