'I Just Want to Be Your Friend': The Corporal Works of Mercy as a Means of Encountering Christ
- Guest Contributor
- Apr 7
- 5 min read
By Senite Sahlezghi
Evening Prayer had just ended, the smell of incense still looming in the air, and the Blessed Sacrament had just been reposed.
As I walked out of the Cathedral, I saw a man standing alone, seemingly waiting.
I began to rummage through my things, looking for my keys and searching for another way to my car. The night all of a sudden seemed darker than it did before.
Resolving to stay calm, I was startled by a voice asking me, “Do you know what time it is?” Looking up, I realized that the man I’d seen before, standing by himself, was experiencing homelessness.
I told him I was unsure of the time, and I searched for my keys more urgently than before.
He asked me again, “Do you know what time it is?”
With my keys finally in hand, I replied that it was probably around 6:30 p.m.
He asked me a third time, “Do you know what time it is?”
Looking around to see if there was anyone around me, the man noticed my discomfort and exclaimed, “Why are you so afraid of me?” to which I responded, “Because you’re making me nervous.”
He looked at me and said, “But I just want to be your friend.”
Pierced by his words, I was speechless. I looked at him for a brief moment, realizing I had just encountered Jesus himself in the distressing disguise of his poor.
Breaking the gaze, I checked my watch to confirm the time, wished him a good night and proceeded to my car. I sat there, stunned and ashamed of my own poor love.
In Book 2 of Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, we find the elder Zossima accompanying countless monastery visitors searching for his presence, wisdom and intercession. During one such visit, Zossima confers with a mother who is suffering due to her daughter’s illness and the insufficiency of her own love as she attempts to care for her sick child. Zossima responds to her with words we can each take to heart when faced with the fragility of our own capacity to love.
“Never be frightened at your own faint-heartedness in attaining love. Don’t be frightened overmuch even at your evil actions. I am sorry I can say nothing more consoling to you, for love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed and in the sight of all. Men will even give their lives if only the ordeal does not last long but is soon over, with all looking on and applauding as though on the stage. But active love is labor and fortitude, and for some people too, perhaps, a complete science. But I predict that just when you see with horror that in spite of all your efforts you are getting farther from your goal instead of nearer to it — at that very moment I predict that you will reach it and behold clearly the miraculous power of the Lord who has been all the time loving and mysteriously guiding you.”
It is beautiful to idealize loving others because Christ loves us, but it can often be a “harsh and dreadful thing” to live the reality of the ideal. We come face-to-face with the limitedness of our love in circumstances that demand that we actually go beyond ourselves. In that moment outside of the Cathedral, I discovered that this kind of love is difficult. I tried to love based on my efforts alone and was found wanting.
In his first letter, John the Apostle exhorts his flock to “love because he first loved us.” He goes on to say, “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ but hates his brother, he is a liar; for whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen” (1 John 4:19-20).
So often, we live in the comfort of our personal relationship with the Lord and choose to forget that the Gospel commands us to love God and one another, to love each other because of our love for God and (most importantly) his love for us. The man outside of the Cathedral knew that command and personified the Lord as he invited me to risk encountering the poverty of my ‘brother’ with my own poverty, revealing the Gospel imperative of charity.
Stunted by the results of my self-centered love, the Lord reminds us today that he desires to love through us, in us and with us. Jesus enters into our reality to reconcile us not only to himself but to one another as well.
As Zossima advises that mother in search of his paternal wisdom, he reveals to us “the miraculous power of the Lord who has been all the time loving and mysteriously guiding” each of us. This is the grace to ask for: that the Lord may love each of us and that we may subsequently be guided to participate in the mysterious ways of his love for his people, our brothers and sisters.
Charity takes on a new and definitive meaning when we realize that it is a supernatural virtue, one that invites us to love with the Heart of Christ. We can do so only after having surrendered our own hearts to his burning love, thereby assenting to the manifold and creative ways he subsequently desires to love others through us, his beloved “earthen vessels” (cf. 2 Corinthians 4:7).
Father Romano Guardini once exclaimed, “In the experience of a great love, everything becomes an event within its scope.” When we have discovered the mysterious and consuming fire of God’s love for us, the eyes of our hearts are renewed, and we see the world and its circumstances through the gaze of Christ’s own heart. Everything changes. Charity no longer becomes a command but an imperative that impels us on. Our neighbor no longer 10 becomes an obstacle but a brother to be encountered along the Way.
With our newfound desire to live the reality of this supernatural virtue of charity, Jesus gives us the very concrete corporal works of mercy. In these corporal works, Jesus invites us into an encounter of love with our neighbor, realizing that whatever we do for the least of our brothers, we do to him. (cf. Matthew 25:40)
In this Lent and Easter season, I encourage each of us to pray with each of the corporal works of mercy listed below. Ask Jesus to give you opportunities for him to love others through you, opportunities for you to love him. When we practice these incarnate ways of loving, we do so with the hope that we may all one day hear the words of our own hearts’ desire, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Matthew 25:34).
Feed the hungry.
Give water to the thirsty.
Clothe the naked.
Shelter the homeless.
Visit the sick.
Visit the imprisoned or ransom the captive.
Bury and pray for the dead.
