Jesus, returned to the Father, had sent the Spirit. Was Jesus, therefore, finished with them? Did his ascent into the innaccessible heavens and the sending of the Spirit as his "replacement" mean that their contact with him was forever a thing of the past? Was he to be only a ghostly model to conjure in the mind but never to hold again in human arms? No; and this is not simply because Paul had taught them that Jesus was Lord of the Cosmos and they were his mystical Body. Such constructs are, in the last analysis, too cerebral to make a lasting difference in the ordinary lives of ordinary people like Prisca and Aquila.
The appearances that followed on the discovery of the empty tomb had given them a taste of Jesus risen and exalted. The disciples had, in effect, just caught him midway through his ascension from the realms of the dead--on his way to the Father's right hand. From time to time, long after Jesus's ascension, unusual individuals, like Paul on the road to Damascus, would be privileged recipients of such "out of time" appearances, as they may be even to our day.
But what of you and me, the less-than-privileged? What of folks like Prisca and Aquila, or tunic-making Dorcas and sleepy Eutychus, whom nobody would mistake for visionaries? Are we to be left only with faith?
The answer lies in Matthew's Gospel, which shows the public life of Jesus as getting under way with the Sermon on the Mount (and the articulation of the Beatitudes) and closes the narration of this trajectory with a scene no less memorable, Jesus's final sermon before his passion:
To this heart-stopping lesson, Matthew adds the frightening comment:"Jesus had now finished all he wanted to say."
The Son of Man has become the Ward of all Mankind. Incarnated as the human Jesus of Nazareth, he is after his resurrection the principle of Jewish Justice itself, incarnated in the person of anyone and everyone who needs our help. It is ironic that some Christians make such a fuss about the elements of the Eucharist--bowing before them, kneeling in adoration, because Christ is present in them--but have never bothered to heed these solemn words about the presence of Christ in every individual who is in need. Jesus told us only once (at the Last Supper) that he would be present in the Bread and Wine, but he tells us repeatedly in the gosepls that he is always present in the Poor and Afflicted--to whom we should all bow and kneel. It is perverse that some Christians make such a fuss about the bound text of God's Word, carrying it processionally, holding it with reverence, never allowing it to touch the ground, but have never considered seriously this text of Matthew 25, in the light of which we would always catch God's Needy before they hit the ground. It sometimes seems that it is to churchpeople in particular--to Christian Pharisees--that these words of Jesus are directed.
But the first-century churchpeople, the people of the Way, took this lesson will all solemnity. It gave them their constant focus--on the poor and needy. Though this focus will be abandoned soon enough as Christian interest turns in the second century to theological hatred, in the third century to institutional triumphalism, and in the fourth to the deadly game of power politics, it has remained the focus of a few in every age. "Often, often often, goes the Christ in the stranger's guise" is the repeated refrain of a medieval Irish poem, "The Rune of Hospitality"; and the figure of Christ in the guise of clowns, beggars, and fools roams the literatures of Europe, the Americas, Africa, Oceania, and even Asia, from the earliest novels of Shusaku Endo and the films of Federico Fellini. In every age, brothers and sisters of Jesus have come forward to heed the lesson, not least Dorothy Day, the twentieth-century saint of New York and founder of the Catholic Worker movement, who spent her life in service to the hungry and homeless, the displaced and dispossessed, who truly loved every Dostoyevskian idiot who crossed her path, and who once wrote:
It is no use saying that we are born two thousand years too late to give room to Christ. Now will those who live at the end of the world have been born too late. Christ is always with us, always asking for room in our hearts.
But now it is with the voice of our contemporaries that He speaks, with the eyes of store clerks, factory workers, and children that He gazes; with the hands of office workers, slum dwellers, and suburban housewives that He gives. It is with the feet of soldiers and tramps that He walks, and with the heart of anyone in need that He longs for shelter. And giving shelter or food to anyone who asks for it, or needs it, is giving to Christ...
If we hadn't got Christ's own words for it, it would seem raving lunacy to believe that if I offer a bed and food and hospitality to some man or woman or child, I am replaying the part of ... Martha or Mary, that my guest is Christ. There is nothing to show it, perhaps. There are no halos already glowing round their heads--at least none that human eyes can see...
To see how far one realizes this, it is a good thing to ask honestly what you would do, or have done, when a beggar asked at your house for food. Would you--or did you--give it on an old cracked plate, thinking that was good enough? Do you think that Martha and Mary thought that the old and chipped dish was good enough for their guest?...
For a total Christian, the goad of duty is not needed--always prodding one to perform this or that good deed. It is not a duty to help Christ, it is a privilege. It is likely that Martha and Mary sat back and considered that they hade done all that was expected of them--is it likely that Peter's mother-in-law grudgingly served the chicken she had meant to keep till Sunday because she thought it was her "duty"? She did it gladly; she would have served ten chickens if she had had them.
If that is the way they gave hospitality to Christ, it is certain that that is the way it should still be given. Not for the sake of humanity. Not because it might be Christ who stays with us, comes to see us, takes up our time. Not because these people remind us of Christ...but because they are Christ.
...When we are called forth from the dust of death, the Just Judge will ask us if we lived by the Cosmic Code, the underlying principle that animates the universe, the code of justice and mercy, the code of caring for the neighbor who is in need. The Good Samaritans of this world, except in extraordinary cases, see only the man fallen among theives, the person who needs help. They do not see Christ; they may never even have heard of him. But he is there, warming human encounters, softening the harshness of existence, lighting the darkness of faith...
© Thomas Cahill