+ There is a familiar saying: “Before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes.”
It is surely a pure and simple and very straightforward saying. You need to understand a person’s experiences, challenges, thought processes and so much more.
What about their culture? What about their religious beliefs? What about their family history and their personal formation and growth?
+Jesus, the Christ (that is — God, the Holy One, the second person of the Holy Trinity) had to enter into our human experience for us!
He had to share everything — our blood, our flesh, our death. The redeeming of it all was again how he shared it, how he embraced it, how he renewed it.
+ In the language of the Gospel today, he literally “took her by the hand and helped her up.”
Then she was well and waited on them.
+ No wonder, when word got out, that all who were sick with various diseases, and those who were possessed, came from near and far to see him, listen to him, be touched by him, open their hearts to him, and some even wanted to follow him.
+ Imagine, we have and believe in a God who saw it necessary to “walk in our shoes,” to understand us not from afar, but up close; to understand us for us, to “take us by the hand and help us up.”
He knew us better than we knew us! He took us by the hand and by the heart and showed us how to love, even when we were not being loved — even when rejected, ridiculed, and hung upon a cross.
Now that is taking us by the hand and helping us up!
Father Perry D. Leiker is the 14th pastor of St. Bernard Catholic Church. Reach him at (323) 255-6142. Email Father Perry at pleiker@stbernard-church.com. Follow Father Perry on Twitter: @MrDeano76.
