Treat 'them' as We Would Treat Jesus

In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells the disciples of his coming death and resurrection. (During His life He does this on at three occasions, and they do not understand). He then tries to explain that the duty of a leader and a believer is to serve the ‘least’ of these.

Jesus puts a young child in the center of the group and says, “Anyone who welcomes one of these children in my name, welcomes me.” In the time of Jesus, children were completely powerless. The child in this story represents a person without power; a person easily controlled, abused or neglected. Jesus is talking about the powerless, the marginalized and those dependent upon others for their very survival.

Jesus tells us to welcome this person as we would welcome Him. How would I welcome Jesus? I would be respectful. I would be humble. I would take great care to offer Him the best that I have to give. I would seek knowledge.

We must give, talk, and feed the powerless with the same respect and humility that we would give, talk and feed Jesus. It is not enough to help the marginalized. We must welcome them the way we would welcome Jesus. We must do so with the same speed with which we would come to Jesus. If Jesus returned to earth today, we would rush to that place and welcome Him. We know where the powerless are and we must rush to them with the same speed with which we would rush to Jesus.