“Whatever you do to the least you do unto me.”
Very often the person we consider the “least” is the person who is our enemy. The “least” may be a lethal enemy, or someone trying to get us fired from our job, or someone who has spread destructive rumors about us, or someone who threatens our family, or just someone the government has brainwashed us into believing is our worthless enemy who needs to be wiped from the face of the earth.
But, my enemy is not the enemy of God, he or she is a beloved son or daughter of the Father of all and a brother or sister of God, “made flesh,” Jesus, who infinitely loves him or her.
It makes sense that in the Sermon of the Mount in Matthew and in the Sermon on the Plain in Luke, Jesus would teach those listening that they are called to “Be merciful as your heavenly Father is merciful.”
To clarify what that means in the same Sermons he proclaimed:
“I say unto you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to them who hate you, and pray for them who despitefully use you and persecute you.”
An obvious meaning of all this is that “Whatever you do to the least you do to me,” includes every enemy of a Christian, regardless of the reason why he or she is seen as an enemy. When a person intentionally hurts, harms or causes suffering to another, he or she is simultaneously doing harm, hurt or suffering to Christ, the Son of Man.
An immediate logical application of this is that when a soldier is nurtured in the erotic and selective empathy of homicidal nationalism by his or her government and society, bringing pain and suffering down on an enemy, is still bringing pain and suffering down on Christ. It makes no difference in terms of the teaching of Jesus in the Gospels whether a soldier is attacking another because they are communist, capitalist, socialist, Muslim, Jew or a fellow Christian. Whatever that other is, he or she is the enemy and the “least” in the evaluation of the soldier, especially even if he or she is a lethal enemy. There can be found no exemption in Jesus’ teaching, “Whatever you do to the least you do unto me,” for men and women who go to war against the enemy of a nation. When you choose to bring pain and suffering down on another, you are bringing pain and suffering into the existence of all who love him or her, including Jesus. Since Jesus is a true human being as well as true God, who deeply loves his brother or sister, whom you are about to throw into agony, how could he not suffer when they suffer?
The detonation of the three atomic bombs in 1945, beginning eighty years ago this day, may have been for Jesus the Christ a scourging and crowning with thorns as terrible as what took place in Jerusalem 2000 years ago. The pain that those three 1945 atomic detonations brought to hundreds of thousands of people, all of whom were deeply loved by the Father and Jesus, beginning almost immediately with the downwinders from Trinity Site on July 16,1945 and reaching halfway around the world to Hiroshima and Nagasaki within a month, is infinitely beyond all human comprehension.
Perhaps, Pascal was aware of something most of us miss, when he is reported as saying, “Christ remains nailed to the Cross until the last sin is wiped away.” I would express it this way: “Christ remains nailed to the cross until human beings stop hurting each other.”
-Emmanuel Charles McCarthy
www.emmanuelcharlesmccarthy.org
https://www.youtube.com/@emmanuelcharlesmccarthy3292
“Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Love.
Heaven and earth are full of Your glory!
Hosanna in the highest!
Blessed is He, Who comes in the Name of the Lord.
Hosanna in the highest!”
