Saturday, April 19, 2014

Mama, is that Jesus?


          A few weeks ago a co worker of mine started to talk with me and ask me questions about the Catholic faith. I don’t know if he knew I am a deacon, but it is pretty common knowledge in my department.
One day as we sat in the break room he told me that at one time he worked as a clerk for a heavy equipment company. At that time he had long hair and a beard. As he was waiting on a customer at the parts counter he heard her little girl asked her “Mama is that Jesus? 
He told me he felt ashamed. He considered himself a practicing Catholic, though he said he didn’t go to church as often as he would like too. But he felt ashamed, not because he doesn't know or love Jesus, he felt ashamed because he didn't know if the little girl was asking the question because he looked like Jesus on the outside, or looked like Jesus on the inside. He was hoping that it was the things he did for others that showed the Christ in him, more than his physical appearance.
          I have been thinking about that for the past few weeks, and sometimes when I do my Night Shift Of Prayer, I get some different thoughts going through my mind. One thing that came to me was that because we are made in the image and likeness of God did Jesus see himself when he looked at others?
          I wondered if he seen the compassion of Veronica, as she wiped his face, as the compassion he had shown to others? Did he see the despair of the women, who were weeping for him, as the same despair he had, as he wept over Jerusalem?
          Did he see the sorrow in Mary and Martha’s faces as the same sorrow he had for his friend Lazarus? Did he see the same hurt in Peter’s face, when he asked him three times if Peter loved him as the same hurt he felt when Peter denied him three times? Did he see the same joy in the children’s faces as the same joy he had when they would surround him with their playfulness and innocence.
Then another thought came to me, when I started to ponder the question that Fr Bob asks at funeral wake services, of how did the deceased person bring you closer to God.
Have we ever thought about how people would answer that question at your funeral? If we are to be Christ to others how do others see Christ in us? How on this Good Friday can we die to ourselves, to be able to allow Christ to live through us, to be able bring others closer to him?
As Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen once said “It is so hard to admit that one is a sinner; it is so hard to climb the hill of Calvary and kneel beneath a cross and ask for pardon, forgiveness. Certainly it is hard. But it is harder to hang there.”
So I leave you with this prayer in the form of a song by the JJ Weeks Band


Let them see You in me
Let them hear You when I speak
Let them feel You when I sing
Let them see You
Let them see You in me

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