I can’t understand the image of Christ as stranger. How could he come to those beloved disciples on the road to Emmaus unrecognized? How could he be naked, poor, imprisoned, and we not see him there? How could he, my dear heart, be the stinking, cursing, drunk and homeless? Could he be my neighbor John who riding is bicycle home from the bar, at two AM, went over the handlebars and broke his nose? Could it have been Jesus I drove home with tears in his eyes and pain in his body? It is hard for me to see Jesus there, not because I don’t think he would stoop so low, but because I love him and don’t want to see blood pour from his nose or tears from his eyes. What would it mean to see my Jesus in all those around me? Is he there in people I know, and who don’t even know him, or just in strangers? Does he visit in the familiar as well as the strange? Perhaps he does, perhaps his incarnation is both in us as his hands and feet and in the fleshly suffering of those around us. Perhaps his paschal mystery continues in all who are hurting, naked and abandoned, just as his advent happens in us as we engage them in service and hospitality.
Seeing our neighbors and strangers as Jesus can be difficult precisely because we cannot see Jesus as coming to us in the form of a sinner.
Now as I encounter Mother Teresa's conviction that we find Jesus in "Distressing disguise" around us, I rejoice in confirmation of the idea. It isn't some wild fantasy I was entertaining when I asked "could it be?" but rather a truth revealed to saints through the ages - a truth I have come to embrace and is shaping me.
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