“Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye
cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:
“For I was an hungered, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye
gave me no drink:
“I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not:
sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.
“Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an
hungered, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison,
and did not minister unto thee?
“Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as
ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.
“And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous
into life eternal.”
Jesus, even in His glory as judge of the last Day, does not forget the
poor and unhappy whom He loved so greatly during His life on earth. He
wishes to appear as one of those “least” who hold out their hands at the
doors and on whom the “great” look down. On earth, in the time of
Tiberius, He was the man who was hungering for bread and love, thirsting
for water and martyrdom, who was like a stranger in His own country, not
recognized by His own brothers, who stripped Himself to clothe those
shaking with cold, who was sick with sorrow and suffering and no one
comforted Him, who was imprisoned in the base prison of human flesh, in
the narrow prison of earthly life. He was divinely hungering for souls,
thirsting for faith, He was the stranger come from the ineffable
fatherland, defenseless before whips and insults, the Man sick with the
holy madness of love. But on that great Day of final Judgment, He will
not be thinking of Himself, as He did not think of Himself when He was a
man among men.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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