LAST OF ALL...

This past Sunday, we heard St. Paul speak of the Risen Christ, saying how he had appeared to so many, “and last of all he appeared to me.” The readings of the day invited us to reflect on how we might proclaim those same words…AND LAST OF ALL HE APPEARED TO ME!

Isaiah’s encounter in the first reading reminds us that God is still looking for messengers to lift the hopes of those in despair. “Whom shall I send?”, God asks. Isaiah’s response, and ours presumably, is , “Here I am Lord. Send me.” Send where? To do what? To give witness to God’s active, loving presence. But to do so, we must first experience that Holy Presence. As Aristotle said, “You can’t give what you ain’t got."

In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus tells Peter to go back out and cast his net into the deep, even though this seasoned fisherman had been casting all night with nothing to show for it. But at Jesus’ request he goes once more and this time a catch beyond his imagination takes place, which leads to a transformation. Peter leaves everything to follow the Master.

Perhaps we too have been “casting our nets” of prayer and good deeds (with seemingly no noticeable change), and are waiting for a miracle of sorts. Recently, I read John Shea’s, Stories of Faith, wherein he writes that Jesus stopped performing miracles because he didn’t want people’s meaningless applause. He wanted a conversion of heart, and ultimately he found this only by becoming “the Suffering Servant”. This coming Sunday’s Gospel on the Beatitudes affirms this. “Blessed are they who are poor”…who feel the pain of an empty stomach…and do what they can to relieve it.

Perhaps instead of seeking a miracle to experience the Loving, Holy Presence, we need more than mere acts of kindness. We need to cast our net deep within our heart and to embrace the suffering of the wounded and broken, the poor and hungry…to see the Christ in them, as Mother Teresa did. There is a story of her washing the maggots off the body of a dying poor man in the streets of Calcutta. A passing tourist comments, “I wouldn’t do that for a million dollars.” To which she responded, “ I wouldn’t either. I do it because I see the face of my Lord in his.”

The face of Christ, we believe, is in each of us. We don’t have to go to Calcutta. Sunday night, as I rode the El from O'Hare Airport, I saw the face of Christ for a fleeting moment in a poor man standing by the door asking for a quarter, and I saw His face in a young man who as he was leaving gave him a candy bar. The poor man practically swallowed it, with tears in his eyes. One could not help but be moved. There is plenty of suffering in our own streets, perhaps in our own homes. When was the last time we truly noticed? All we need is to open our hearts and respond with love, and then perhaps we, too, can say, “and last of all he appeared to me.”