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Jesus didn’t just talk the talk about loving others, he walked the walk. He cared for people he encountered in concrete ways. Today’s Gospel tells the story of him healing a poor woman and a synagogue official’s daughter. The church has always insisted that Christians are to imitate this aspect of Jesus’s life - to care for the people we encounter in concrete, practical ways.
The corporal works of mercy - feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirst, sheltering the homeless, visiting the sick and imprisoned, giving alms to the poor, burying the dead - are suggestions on how we might live the Christian way of life. The list is not all inclusive; there are obviously other ways to serve people in need. Recently I heard that the United States is donating Covid 19 vaccines to countries without the means to produce these shots themselves. This struck me as a corporal work of mercy. When other European countries followed suit, it became a worldwide work of mercy.
One of the issues of our time is that we have become more and more aware of all the people in need in the world. The images I see on television; the articles I read in newspapers, magazines, on-line - I often feel overwhelmed. It is then that I recall Jesus did not heal all the people in his country, let alone the world. To imitate Christ, I simply have to help where I can, when I can. I am only asked to participate in the gracious flow of goodness, kindness, neighborliness that Jesus made manifest in his time and place.
May Jesus’ example - and the example of so many people in my own time and place - make me aware of that flow. May I walk the walk that leads to that stream of grace and “cross…to the other side” where my brothers and sisters in need are waiting.