Imitating Christ in the love that unites

The Almighty and Infinite God, the Lord of Hosts, has become man, the least of men. As Blessed Charles de Foucauld says: “His whole life long he did nothing but go down. He went down in becoming flesh, he went down in becoming a baby, went down in obeying, went down in becoming poor, rejected, persecuted, crucified, in always taking the lowest place.”

There is no lower place but the one where God dwells – the valley of humbleness. For that reason we are not alone in our rejected and most unloved place, or when under an almost irresistible, forceful pressure of temptations. Beneath all of us there is Christ with all his cohort of most powerful angels, where all the saints find their rest.

Jesus said: “Whatever you do to one of these little ones, you do it to me” and “This is my body… this is my blood…” and it is he who washed feet of his apostles. We are asked to seek our Lord and love him in the “little ones”, in the most Blessed Sacrament, in serving others. Those among us who have recognised the divine truth encourage us to always “seek the lowest place, to be as little as our master, to walk with him step by step as a faithful disciple.”

Only then are we given grace to see Jesus in everyone, to treat others with great humility, respect and generosity: “the poorest, the most outcast, a newborn child, a decrepit old person, the least intelligent human being, the most abject, an idiot, a fool, a sometimes sinner, the greatest sinner, the most ignorant, the last of the last, the one most physically and morally repugnant.” And is it not amazing “to live not through the word but through the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, the offering of the Sacrifice of the Mass. It is through prayer and penance and the practice of the Gospel virtues – love, fraternal and universal love, sharing even my last mouthful of bread with every poor person, with every visitor, every stranger, and welcoming each person as a beloved brother or sister. (Bl. Charles de Foucauld

Fr Stan