We’re all familiar with the so-called Golden Rule:
as Jesus phrases it in Matthew’s Gospel,
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Mt. 7:12).
But this is not a teaching unique to Christianity.
We find equivalent statements
in religions and philosophies from around the world.
The prophet Muhammad is reported to have said,
“As you would have people do to you, do to them;
and what you dislike to be done to you, don’t do to them.”
In the Buddhist sacred writings we are told,
“Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.”
And Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative,
even though he himself thought it far superior
in philosophical rigor to the Golden Rule,
ends up sounding pretty similar:
“Treat others how you wish to be treated.”
We might say that something like the Golden Rule
is part of the common moral inheritance of the human race.
It is rooted in our capacity to see ourselves in others,
to see the common bonds of our humanity,
to imagine ourselves in another person’s shoes.
But today’s Gospel offers us something else,
something that goes beyond the Golden Rule.
Rather than telling his followers
“do unto others as you would have them do unto you,”
Jesus says, “do unto others as you would do unto me.”
For, as he say to his disciples, “whatever you do
for one of the least brothers of mine you do for me.”
We are not simply to see ourselves in others;
we are to see Christ.
Rather than being, like the Golden Rule,
a moral intuition shared by many peoples and culture,
what Jesus teaches us today
is something unique to Christianity:
that in serving our brother or sister in need
we are offering service to God himself.
For in Christ God has taken on suffering flesh
and so identified himself with every living person,
especially those who suffer hunger or thirst,
estrangement or deprivation,
captivity or illness.
It was this command to see Christ in others
that led St. Peter Claver to undertake
his extraordinary ministry to the enslaved Africans
who were brought to the New World.
He would meet the slave ships
that arrived in the port of Cartagena
to minister to the human cargo of those ship,
many of whom were naked, sick, and dying,
sometimes literally giving them the clothes off his back.
What the world would treat as chattel to be sold,
Peter Claver treated as deserving of
the same human dignity that he himself desired.
But even more than that,
he treated them as sacred icons
in which he could see the face of Christ.
The lives of these Black slaves mattered to him
because they mattered to Christ
and Christ mattered to him.
Let us ask for St. Peter Claver to pray for us
that we too might find the face of Christ
in the face of those who suffer,
especially those who suffer
racial hatred and discrimination.
And may God have mercy on us all.
