Up close and personal

            THAT gospel episode about Christ healing a big crowd of

sick people by laying his hands on each one of them (cfr. Lk 4,40)

speaks eloquently of how we ought to deal with everyone we meet in our

life. He just did not say, “All of you, be cured.” No. He approached

everyone and laid his hands on each one.

            Like Christ, we should try to be up close and personal

with each of the people we meet, irrespective of who they are, whether

they are relatives, friends, colleagues, strangers and even enemies.

We have to avoid a casual and generic dealing that does not go deep

enough to show and give the real charity that we are commanded to do.

            Of course, this will require a lot of effort and

sacrifice. We most likely will be tempted to think that Christ is God

first of all. He has all the powers. Nothing is impossible with him.

We cannot be like him since he is God in the first place. We are only

human.

  

            But he is also man who has assumed our human condition to

the point of becoming like sin without committing sin (cfr. 2 Cor

5,21). He has assumed the worst condition that man can get into. Being

“the way, the truth and the life,” he is showing us in this particular

case how to deal with people in general.

            The fact that we are simply human beings with all sorts of

limitations and weaknesses should not be an excuse from developing and

having a universal concern with a personalized approach in our

dealings with people.

            Let us remember that we have been made in God’s image and

likeness, endowed with powers to enable us, with God’s grace, to be

truly like God. In other words it’s like we have been given a blank

check the amount of which we are completely free to write. And what we

write on that check depends on how we correspond to God’s grace in our

effort to be like God through Christ in the Holy Spirit.

            We have to train ourselves to have the very mind and heart

of Christ. This, of course, would require us to do some adjustments

and even drastic changes in our attitudes and ways. What is needed is

that we just try and try, even if our best efforts cannot achieve that

ideal. Anyway, we are not really expected to reach that goal with our

powers alone. It is Christ, with his grace, that will do it for us.

Ours is simply to try.

  

            We, of course, have our own personal ways that can sort of

define us—our temperament, personality, our biases and preferences,

our culture and lifestyle, our opinions and views, etc.—but we should

not be trapped by them.

            Our differences and conflicts among ourselves are

unavoidable. But they are not meant to be divisive, alienating us from

the others. They, in fact, can be the condition to generate the power

of God’s love that unites everyone to work on us.

            That is why Christ told us to be humble, to have the

attitude of wanting to serve and not to be served, to avoid the

attitude of entitlement. He told us to deny ourselves and carry the

cross. (cfr. Mt 16,24) St. Paul reiterates the same idea by saying

that we have to regard everybody else as better than us, looking after

the other’s interest rather than simply focusing on our own. (cfr.

Phil 2,3-4)

            This may be a tremendous, overwhelming endeavor to

undertake, but we can always start somewhere. Are we training

ourselves, for example, to be more thoughtful and mindful of others?

Are we developing a keen interest in the others? Are we learning to

let go of our personal preferences to accommodate the way others are?