Matthew 25:31-46
“Lord, when was it that we saw you…?”
When I volunteered to write a Lenten meditation, I was afraid it would come out as lovely platitudes about loving our neighbor without a personal application. However, a real-life event occurred that really brought home the message to me.
Long story short, my husband had a bad fall in January and about a month later he was hospitalized for a subdural hematoma (it was a slow leak). He had very successful surgery and was almost back to normal the day after the surgery. It felt like a miracle. As he recovered in the hospital, the doctors, nurses, technicians, and even the employees who brought his meals to him and the employees who cleaned the room really seemed to care and we bonded with this care team. As our encounters went on, I really felt like they “saw” him and me and our daughter. And I really tried to see them as well. They were not just passing through and doing their jobs, but they would stop and talk to us, and it felt that we were “seeing” each other.
I think to see someone you must at least imagine what it’s like to be that person. I couldn’t imagine working 12-hour shifts, but those nurses soldiered on, and I know that the night of my husband’s surgery his day nurse stayed past the end of her shift to make sure he was stabilized before she turned him over to the next nurse who came on duty. I was very touched by her dedication. I felt we were all being “seen”.
After Covid and when we didn’t have to wear masks, I started trying to smile at people in the grocery store. I get all kinds of reactions to this. Some people look away, some look surprised and some actually smile back at me. I guess you could say I was trying to “see” them, even when they may not have wanted to be seen. I still do this especially when someone I pass in the grocery aisle looks a little down. And I feel better when I get a smile from that person because, after all, there’s a kind of solidarity to pushing through the chore of grocery shopping and why not lessen the burden a little. And a smile costs nothing.
Our world is so busy, and we can be so distracted by our own business that we lose sight of how interconnected we are or should be. A nice platitude, but sometimes it takes a life changing event to wake us up to the fact that we Christians have a big role to play in “seeing” other people and how important we are to each other. Perhaps we could try a Lenten smile campaign this year.
Meditation by Sue Legnani
Retired Director of Christian Formation
St. Peter’s Church, Medford
Diocese of New Jersey