Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. (Hebrews 13:2)
I find our sun's ongoing close encounter with
Barnard’s Star to be absolutely amazing. Never again in the lifetime of the
universe will these two suns meet again, and we are present to see the event. And the two stars could hardly be
more different. The one being small in mass and luminosity; the other gigantic
and bright. Ours boasting a rich system of planets, moons, asteroids, comets,
and Kuiper Belt Objects; the other apparently traveling the star lanes in
complete solitude. The one destined for a trillion-year lifespan of changeless
quietude; the other even now preparing to shed its youthful exuberance before
collapsing upon itself into a white dwarf.
How many chance encounters do we have in
our own lives? Even concerning our closest friends, can one ever be certain
that your next meeting won’t be the last? And how much more so for the great
mass of people who cross our paths each day. Several years ago I happened to be
pulling out of my driveway on the way to a (much needed) haircut. At that very
moment an elderly woman was walking along the sidewalk not far from my house.
To this day I have no idea what made me give her even a second glance, but for
some inexplicable reason I did. Something
made me stop and ask her if everything was all right. To my astonishment, she
replied in Russian (in which I happen to be near-fluent) that she could not
speak English and had gotten completely lost. To her equal astonishment, I
answered (also in Russian) that I could perhaps help her out. It turned out
that she had had decided to walk to the grocery store. Well… knowing that the
nearest one was nearly two miles away, I told her I’d drive her there. I waited
out front until she had finished, and then said I’d drive her home. Turns out
she had no idea where “home” was. We ended up driving up one street and down
another, until she finally exclaimed, “Vot dom syna!” (Here is my son’s house.)
She was only visiting, and had no knowledge of the local area at all. Now what
were the odds against my leaving the house at the precise moment of her passing
by? (Had she been even a hundred yards further down the street, I probably
would have picked up enough speed to have missed noticing her altogether.) And
what were the odds of it being me who
asked her whether she needed help? (Not many people in my neighborhood
understand Russian.) I related the incident to a co-worker the next day, and
she told me, “You saw an angel!” Whatever she was, I never saw the woman again.
And I never did get to the barber that day.
Matthew warns us in his Gospel that Christ
will ask of us one and only one question on the Day of Doom – how did we
respond to those in need who crossed our path? Did we feed the hungry, shelter
the homeless, or clothe the naked? In Luke, we might notice that the man beaten
by robbers on the road to Jericho was not known to the Samaritan who stopped to
help him – he was just “some guy” he chanced upon on his way. James is about as
blunt as one can get: “True religion is this: to visit orphans and widows in
their affliction.” Saint Augustine tells us, “So there is the poor man and there
is the rich, and they have met each other, and the Lord has made them both; the
rich to help this one, the poor to test that one.” (from a sermon given
sometime between 425 and 430 A.D.)
Dostoevsky illustrated this point
perfectly in his novel The Brothers
Karamazov, where the character Grushenka tells the following story:
There
once lived a wicked old woman – one might even call her an evildoer. She died
without a single good deed to her name. At once the demons seized her and cast
her into the Fiery Pit. But even then, her guardian angel refused to give up on
her and thought, “Can I not recall even one good deed done by her, that I might
bring it before God?” Finally he thought of something, and coming before God
the angel said, “They do say that once, while standing in her kitchen garden,
she pulled up an onion and gave it to a poor woman who was passing by.” “Very
well,” answered God. “Find that very same onion and hold it out over the pit.
Allow the woman to grab hold, and then pull with all your might. If you manage
to pull her out, then she can join us here in Heaven. But if the onion breaks…
well, she’ll just have to stay where she is.”
The
angel ran to the edge of the pit and held the onion out to the woman. “Grab
on,” he called to her, “and I’ll pull you out.” With great care (not wanting to
break the onion), the angel pulled and pulled, and had very nearly gotten her
out when the other sinners in the Fiery Pit saw what was going on. They all
began holding on to her legs, so that they might be pulled out along with her.
But the old woman, being as wicked as she was, began to kick them away,
shouting, “I’m the one who’s getting out here, not you. It’s my onion and not yours!” And the very
instant those words left her lips, the onion snapped in two and she fell back
into the lake of fire, where she burns to this day.
(This is my own translation. I have taken some slight liberties with the text to
make the story more comprehensible in isolation from its original context.)
So in the last analysis, it appears that
our responsibility to the poor is to offer them food, clothing, and shelter,
whereas their responsibility to us is to offer a way out of Hell.
Not a bad trade.
No comments:
Post a Comment