When visiting Poland the
late Blessed John Paul II stated that while giving old and unneeded clothes is
good, true charity would be to go out and buy new clothes to give away. Anyone
can get rid of something that they do not need while getting for
themselves something better. A saint will keep the inferior clothing and give
what is better to others.
It is because clothes have
so very much to do with our dignity as human beings that Jesus urges us to
clothe the naked. But this confronts us with a problem. As with every counsel
of Jesus, the command to clothe the naked has both a practical and spiritual
dimension, because grace builds on nature. And there's the rub: My encounters
with the naked beggar are fairly rare, as are yours. The men we meet in the
soup kitchen line are not
naked. Nor are the homeless guys you meet in your town. Once again, we discover
we live in a society where the bottom of Maslow's Pyramid is pretty well
covered. The purely animal need for insulating cloth in which to wrap the human
organism is pretty well covered in the First World. Clothing banks swell to
bursting with free clothes of every size. Rare indeed is the opportunity for us
in the First World to live out Jesus' command: "If anyone wants to go to law
with you over your tunic, hand him your cloak as well." (Mt 5:40)
However, if we cast our view
further abroad, we discover that this is not the case universally. At this
hour, many millions of Lazaruses around the world sit naked or nearly naked for
a simple reason: They cannot afford clothes, and the clothes they have are the only shield they have from cold, heat… and shame. Each
one of these persons is Jesus Christ. Clothe him and you have clothed the Son
of the Living God, and He will not forget it on That Day. That's the basic
insistence of the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats.
Stop lying to one another,
since you have taken off the old self with its practices and have put on the
new self, which is being renewed, for knowledge, in the image of its creator. Here
there is not Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian,
Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all and in all. Put on then, as God’s
chosen ones, holy and beloved, heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility,
gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another,
if one has a grievance against another; as the Lord has forgiven you, so must
you also do. And over all these put on love, that is, the bond of perfection.
(Colossians 3:9-14)
In that moment he gave the
leper the dignity that he deserved.
Not because he was a leper.
Not because he was a beggar.
Not because he was poor.
Not because he was Francis.
Simply
because it was a human being who needed the dignity of knowing that they
deserved love as much as any other human being.
