What does mercy look like in real life? If we are honest with ourselves, to be merciful does not often come naturally to the human heart. Indeed, a glance at ancient literature reveals no heroes of mercy, but rather men who dealt out justice and revenge. Mercy does not emerge on the stage of history until the life and death of Christ gives it voice. Yet what does it mean to live out the call to mercy?
You Did It for Me
Today’s Gospel reading from Matthew 25 memorably unfolds the picture of mercy. Jesus tells the story of a king who at the end of time separates out all people as one separates the sheep and the goats. On one side are gathered all the righteous, defined by their acts of mercy towards the least of their brothers; on the other side are those who failed to show mercy. The strange, radical crux of the story, though, lies in the king’s identification of himself with those least and poorest of his subjects. For when the people ask him when they did anything for him, he utters that line which has seared many a saint’s heart: “Inasmuch as you did it for the least of these, you did it for me.”
The passage is one of the most convicting in the Gospels. How often do we fail to extend mercy to those most in need of it? How often do we merely walk past the suffering soul in bland indifference? It is all too easy and natural to ignore these least of the world. Yet as the story so piercingly reveals, when we pass by the suffering poor, we are walking past Christ Himself.
The Least of These
As I reflect upon this passage and its call to mercy, one question arises: Who is this least of men that Jesus speaks of? How can we find and know this person whom we are called to serve in mercy? The story paints his portrait vividly: he is the one who hungers and thirsts, the one languishing in prison, sick and stripped of his clothes.
The reality is that most of us, in our day-to-day lives, will not come across the physically imprisoned or the naked, or the one dying of hunger and thirst. How, then, do we come to serve these least of our brethren?
Living Out Mercy at Home
I believe the answer lies very close to home. The least is all of us. Each of us shares in these sorrows of the poor, for we each hunger and thirst for the nourishment of our souls; we each find ourselves in seasons of feeling alone, imprisoned by sin, or naked and shivering in the storms of life. Perhaps, too, the least are those souls most impoverished by their rejection of faith; the very souls that we, as bearers of Christ, may find it most difficult to relate to. I know many of these in my life. How much easier it is to turn away from these people who differ so much from us! And yet, in truth they are the ones most in need of our mercy.
Today, I invite all of us to take this question to prayer. Who is the least of my brethren? To whom am I being called to extend the gift of mercy? Let us ask to see the heart of Christ even in these lonely and impoverished souls. It may be that in loving these who seem furthest from Him, we console the Heart of Christ Himself.
