Nearby the shopping malls along Warwick’s busy Route 2 is a senior citizen residence felicitously named “Matthew XXV.” Adjacent to St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, the pleasant and well-maintained building offers comfort and convenience to a number of elderly and sometimes disabled persons. The structure’s Scriptural designation recalls the famous judgment scene from the 25th chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel account which will be proclaimed at all Masses this coming Sunday, the Solemnity of Christ the King. Matthew XXV is a clear listing of what the Church would later call “The Corporal Works of Mercy.” Feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, caring for the sick and visiting the imprisoned are perennially vivid emblems of a believer’s dedication. Lately however, Scripture commentators are examining precisely toward whom these noble good works are to be directed.
Do Jesus’ words urge compassion toward all persons in general or might Jesus be suggesting charity especially toward his disciples and those who would preach the Gospel message to the world? Notice especially verse 25:30, “And the king will say to them in reply, ‘Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did it for me.’” These “least brothers” might well be the first Christian missionaries whose sufferings were brought upon them by their preaching of the gospel. The Revised New American Bible observes, “The criterion of judgment for all the nations is their treatment of those who have borne to the world the message of Jesus.”
Jesus had spoken earlier about the importance of kindness and openness toward those who would carry his message to the world. In chapter ten, St. Matthew records, “Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me. Whoever receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and whoever receives a righteous man because he is righteous will receive a righteous man’s reward. And whoever gives only a cup of cold water to one of these little ones to drink because he is a disciple—amen, I say to you, he will surely not lose his reward.” Jesus clearly makes a correspondence between accepting his disciples and their words and accepting him and his words. In one instance in the final judgment scene Christ graciously observes, “Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of the least brothers of mine, you did for me.” And in a sadder instance Christ severely remarks, ‘‘Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.” Jesus sees kindness toward those who preach the Gospel message and final acceptance of the Gospel preached by them as the standard by which acceptance of Christ himself will be judged. “Whoever receives you, receives me,” Christ taught in chapter 10. “Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me,” he teaches again today in chapter 25. The message is the same: Jesus identifies with his Church’s ministers. As a person responds to a Church minister so that person responds to Christ himself.
The rightly celebrated words of Jesus in Matthew 25 in which Jesus commends and recommends acts of kindness toward those who would preach the Gospel were certainly justified by the history of the early Church. Not every day was Pentecost Sunday for the first Christians. Tough times were ahead. The stoning to death of St. Stephen, the imprisonment of SS. Peter and John, the detailed sufferings of St. Paul in his letter to the Corinthians (11:23-28): “From the Jews five times I received forty stripes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods; once I was stoned; three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I have been in the deep; in journeys often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils of my own countrymen, in perils of the Gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; in weariness and toil, in sleeplessness often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness — besides the other things, what comes upon me daily.”
Jesus wisely foresaw the trails and challenges that the first Christian missionaries (his “brothers”) would face and endure in order to promote the Gospel message. He also prudently observed that kindness toward and eventually an embrace of these brothers (even “the least” of them) was the measure by which an embrace of him and his Gospel would be reckoned. A believer’s attitude toward any stranger certainly reveals much about his inner self. But a believer’s embrace of those who preach and teach the Gospel message is the ultimate indication of a believer’s worth before Christ.
