You probably already heard or read a story of a pastor who did a test/experiment on his congregation, one that would teach them a lesson they would never forget. The pastor dressed as a homeless man and went to the very same church he ran. As he walked around the church that morning, only three people said hello to him. The pastor asked people to give him money to buy food, and all of them said, “no.” When the pastor tried to sit near the front of the church, the ushers told him to sit in the back. Apparently, they believed that God didn’t want to see homeless people, only those with clean clothing. The pastor says that he said hello to the people in the back, and they only looked at him with cold, icy stares. It happened to be the first day that the new pastor would be preaching at the church, and he was introduced to the congregation at the end of the morning announcements. “We would like to introduce to you our new pastor,” one of the deacons announced. As the congregation clapped with excitement, people were wondering why the homeless man was walking toward the front of the church. When he got to the front, he gave them the words of his very first sermon: “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you? ‘The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
The pastor told his congregation what he’d just experienced. Nearly everyone felt some sense of shame for the way they treated the homeless man who asked for money for food. He then said, “Today I see a gathering of people, not a church of Jesus Christ. The world has enough people, but not enough disciples. When will YOU decide to become disciples?”
In the Gospel today, Jesus asked his disciples two very important questions: Who do people say that I am? And who do you say that I am? With the proliferation of information available online or in the internet, it is so easy nowadays to find whatever we are looking for. If you type the word “Jesus” in Google, you will have 379,000,000 results in 30
seconds! It’s pretty amazing. But the answers that Jesus was looking for are not based on what we read or heard about him, but what we have experienced from him, with him and through him. This particular gospel story can be found in the three Synoptic Gospels. In Matthew’s and Mark’s versions of this story, they both mentioned where this happened, which is in Ceasarea Philippi. But in Luke’s, the context of the story is Jesus was praying by himself, and he was with his disciples. What does this tells us? It tells us that prayer is indispensable in getting to know Christ. Without a good prayer life, it is almost impossible to get to know God because it is in there where we deepen our relationship with him. Even in ordinary human relationships, without regular, sincere and honest communication, relationships will not flourish; they will not be sustained. Same thing with God. If we want to get to know our Lord intimately and personally, we have to invest time, energy, and be willing to be vulnerable with him—that’s a personal relationship, moving from a memorized prayer spirituality to a spontaneous dialogue that surges from the depths of the heart. Following this, how can we ascertain that we truly have that personal encounter with Jesus and that we truly know him versus just knowing him from secondary sources? The answer to this can be discerned from a song that we sometimes sing at Mass: They will know we are Christians by our love, by our love, by our love. This may sound corny, but it really does capture the heart of what a follower or disciple of Christ is. It is through our love that we can ascertain that we know Jesus. There is so much hate, violence, degradation, and character assassination happening all over the place because of this failure to recognize who Jesus truly is. He is not just a concept or an idea, an ideology or a theology to be studied upon, but primarily a person to be encountered, and that Jesus is present in every person we meet regardless of their background or situation. As disciples of Jesus, we can’t be complicit to any kind of agenda that promotes hatred, violence and discrimination. We have to see the inviolable dignity that every human person possesses in virtue of being created in the image and likeness of God. This is not easy— to be “Christified”, that is to be configured to Christ, is not a walk in the park; it cost a lot of people their lives as we have seen in the saints and martyrs. Jesus himself said, “The Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed.” He exhorts us to take up and carry our cross. So looking at how we lead our lives right now, can we truly say that we know Jesus? Are we truly “Christified”, meaning people know that we are Christians by our love? – Fr. Cary