Jesus was a poor man. He let go of the glory of his divinity to assume our human condition. He surrendered every claim to honor as he served us, and, more than that, he surrendered his very life-blood for our salvation.

Jesus was a poor man, and when he left the earth as man, he did not want to leave us orphans. So he left us his Body and Blood, to keep us in constant communion with himself and with our brothers and sisters – especially his beloved poor.

As the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it, “to receive in truth the Body and Blood of Christ given up for us, we must recognize Christ in the poorest, his brethren (1397).” How does this happen? In various ways. Let me share two stories with you.

Go Lead the Music!

When I was a young staff worker in my first field house, my director approached me one day and said, “Fr. John needs someone to lead the music for the Sunday Masses in his church, and I told him you’d do it.”

I panicked. Though I played classical guitar, I didn’t know how to do the strumming you do with folk guitar, I had never used a guitar strap, and I had never played standing up. I had never led a congregation in singing or used a microphone, and I didn’t know what music they used. And I had three days to learn all this!

An Inner City Church

However, those challenges were miniscule compared to the challenge, for me, of the congregation. For this was an inner city church and as in many such churches, many of those who attended were the poor, the transients, and those who suffer from mental illness and addictions. I wasn’t yet used to this kind of poverty, and I was fearful.

Confirming my fears on that first Sunday, a wild-looking woman burst into the church in the middle of Fr. John’s homily. She swooped down the aisle, made a sweeping sign of the Cross, and plopped down in the front pew, all the while muttering away.

Fr. John didn’t bat an eye. As I later learned, this happened every Sunday at exactly the same time.

At the Sign of Peace, I thrust out my hand to Fr. John, hoping to then retreat behind my microphone and guitar. But he pushed me out, saying, “Put down your guitar, and go greet the people.”

Go Greet Them!

You would have thought he had handed me a death sentence! With feet dragging, I slowly descended the two steps to the main body of the church and made my way past the empty front pews to the people.

As I approached these rough looking characters, I was panicking: what would I say to them? What would I do? What would they say? What would they do?

I was enveloped by welcome and bathed with love. I don’t know how else to describe what happened than to say that a veil was mysteriously lifted, and I saw the Face of Christ in these people. It was Jesus, the Divine Pauper, who was giving me his own kiss of peace through them.

When I returned to the front of the Church, I was radiant and rejoicing. This was my kind of Church! I didn’t have to be a great guitar player. I didn’t have to “have it all together”. I didn’t have to be worthy. Christ was in the midst of us all, and his Body, the Church, embraced us all. I was home!

That line from the Catechism does describe my experience that day: “to receive in truth the Body and Blood of Christ given up for us, we must recognize Christ in the poorest, his brethren.”

I guess I began to receive Jesus in deeper truth that day.

My second story is about the poorest man I ever met, the man who taught me the most about the sacrificial dimension of the Eucharist.

I was in India, and a priest there asked if I would like to accompany him in bringing Communion to the six Catholics at the leprosarium.

I readily agreed, and we set out across a seemingly endless wasteland. It was in the pre-monsoon season, and so hot winds blew dust into our faces and moaned of desolation. Finally, right in front of railway tracks, which bordered the property, we came upon the few grass huts that constituted the leprosarium.

Inside one hut, six men had gathered. One of them, whose name was Christian, was setting up the altar. His fingers were mere stubs and his eyes were filled with suffering. Yet his whole being was filled with light, and it was he who led the prayers and the singing.

After Mass, the priest told me about Christian. He had come when he was a young man, and had been cured of leprosy. Then, though he could have left, he chose to stay, and he learned some nursing skills, so that he could help ease the suffering of the others. Though he knew that he might contract the disease again, he willingly laid down his life.

What a Christ figure he was! I couldn’t help but be struck by the parallel between his sacrificial life, and the sacrifice of the Mass that we had just experienced.

As the Catechism puts it, “The sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the Eucharist are one single sacrifice” (1367).

I could imagine Christian, the leper, praying like this: Lord, I offer you my suffering. Unite it with your own sacrifice, lift it to the Father, and let your resurrection life fall upon me.

How else could he have received the strength and love to offer his own life in such a sacrificial way?

This has become a powerful way for me to pray. At the presentation of the gifts at Mass, for example, when I am struggling to forgive or to surrender or to love, I can pray: Lord, I offer you my suffering (or my struggle to forgive or to surrender to Your will…). Unite it with Your Cross, lift it to the Father, and let your resurrection life fall upon me.

Or I can offer the suffering in Iraq or in my family or in my Madonna House community. There is no more powerful prayer than to lift the world to the Father through Christ in the Eucharistic Sacrifice.

The more we partake of this Eucharistic Sacrifice, the more we are conformed to the Cross, until, hopefully, the time comes when we can proclaim like Christian the leper, I have been crucified with Christ, and I live now not with my own life, but with the life of Christ who lives in me (Gal 2:19-20).