Readings (Year A):
2 Kings 4:8–11, 14–16a
Psalm 89:2–3, 16–17, 18–19
Romans 6:3–4, 8–11
Matthew 10:37–42
Reflection: The person in front of you is where you meet Christ
I don’t watch World Cup soccer, but a news story caught my eye.
It began months ago. Ruth DeWitt was helping her city prepare to welcome Algeria’s national team. A former Algerian sports reporter, Souarit Wassini, saw DeWitt in a TV interview about Lawrence, Kansas being selected as a host community. Wassini, who currently lives in Minnesota, reached out to her online. One message led to another. They texted for months, despite living hundreds of miles apart and coming from different worlds. When the tournament finally arrived, DeWitt met Wassini at the airport. Instead of sending him to a hotel, she invited him to stay in her home.
Think about that. A woman opens her home to a man she had never met. An Algerian travels to a new city and finds himself welcomed not as a stranger but as a guest. What struck me was that it began with something small: a conversation. A willingness to make room for another person. There is something quietly radical about that.
And I find myself hearing their story alongside today’s readings. Working our way through Matthew’s gospel, last Sunday, we heard: “Do not be afraid.” We are held in God’s care—every hair on our heads is counted. This question follows: what do we do with all that love?
Today Jesus continues to prepare his apostles for sending. We are invited to watch the scene unfold: these are fishermen, laborers, not scholars, but ordinary folks being asked to step into something they do not yet understand. I imagine they are both inspired and unsettled. Sometimes it seems Jesus is speaking in holy riddles: “Whoever loves father or mother, son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” Yikes. Is Jesus asking me to love my family less? How does that square that with the commandments I’ve known since childhood?
We know Jesus is God incarnate. But for the apostles, that reality is still unfolding. Jesus speaks in a framework his apostles would be familiar with, though. Jews pray the Shema twice a day, including these lines from Deuteronomy: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart… your soul… your strength.
God is not one love among others, but the source of love itself. Jesus does not diminish human love, but reorders it, drawing it to its origin. He reveals to them, his own divinity, without stating it directly. I wonder if they realized this in the moment.
Then comes another holy riddle: “Whoever finds his life will lose it. Whoever loses his life will find it.” That is a contradiction until we see it lived out. Comedian Conan O’Brien recently turned theologian when he said that before kids, he was the star of his story, and his work was the most important thing. Holding his first child he realized, “I don’t matter anymore.”
That line stays with me: I don’t matter anymore. Because it’s honest. Conan wasn’t being erased; he was being re-centered. That truth hits home. A cousin used to say, “Your parents thought you hung the moon.” And that was true; I was deeply loved. But they did not make an idol of me. My dad often said: God is first, others second, I am third.
I learned this too, but not without resistance. An immigrant woman on the next block, Mrs. Belmonte, didn’t drive. She walked everywhere pulling a two-wheeled cart. Mom would regularly spot her, swerve the car over without hesitation, and insist she get in. The cart would be squeezed into the back with me, and we would take an unplanned detour. I remember being frustrated. It felt inefficient. Disruptive. “Mom, we don’t have time for this,” I would think. “Mrs. Belmonte likes to walk. This is making us late.” I never prevailed. Mom was showing me that we are not the center of this story.
Over time, I recognized what my parents were forming in me. Hospitality is not an interruption of life. It is the shape of life.
That connects to an insight that came to me when I was praying with the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. I wrote my own version of his “Principle and Foundation” and continue to pray it daily. I was inspired to add a question at the end. “Jesus, what do you want me to do today?”
That’s the sort of centering Jesus places before us. The person in front of you is where you meet Christ. Works of mercy are not optional.
In our recent parish service days, members of our community encountered Christ in places like a Veterans Affairs hospital, an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement processing facility, and a baseball field. Different settings, same reality: God encountered in the life of another person.
It’s that dynamic we saw between two new friends in Kansas. They began, not with theology, but with an open door. Today’s holy riddles are invitations to shift the center, to find a life while losing it, to recognize what was always present: Christ, asking simply to be welcomed.
