“If he walked into my life today.” It’s a lyric from the musical, “Mame.” The singer is expressing regrets for missing her chance to be friends with some other person who steps into her life.

Her song continues: “There must have been a million things, that my heart forgot to say. Would I think of one or two, if he walked into my life today?”

It’s a story about not being ready to take up the offer of friendship that another person may be holding out.

In John’s gospel, the Lord Jesus is making a forceful statement about just this kind of lost opportunity. Right after washing his disciples’ feet, He touches on their (and our) openness to the other person– and its opposite, excluding that person.

Jesus’ focus is on receptivity: “Whoever receives the one I send, receives me.”  If you aren’t open to others, He insists, you aren’t open to Me.

Staying with the lyrics of the song, when meeting other people, would my heart forget to say those “one or two things” which would have welcomed them, which would have “received” that other person?

The familiar language here for us Christians would be: “Seeing Christ in the other.” That is, in the very act of welcoming another person, to be inviting in the Lord Jesus Himself.

Do I, as a follower of Jesus, think of such things when someone “walks into my life?” On such occasions, can I hear Jesus words again, “When you receive the one I send, you’re receiving me.”

Back to those lyrics. What things might have been among those “million things that my heart forgot to say,” if He (Jesus) walks into my life today? And the reverse: What might be those words of welcome I can begin to say, if He (the Lord living in another) walks into my life this very same day?

In so many of his writings, Vincent counsels “seeing God in the other,” especially in the poor.

O Dieu! How beautiful it is to see poor people if we consider them in God and with the esteem in which Jesus Christ held them!

(Volume: 11 | Page#: 26) The Spirit of the Faith added on 6/28/2011