“Whoever believes in me will do the works that I do.” - John

As I thought about the “works that Jesus did,” I found myself going to the gospel scene where Jesus saved the life of a woman accused of adultery by telling her attackers to cast the first stone if they had never sinned.  After they dispersed, he both comforted and admonished her.

It’s just one of many episodes that teach us how to live the central message of today’s gospel: “Whoever believes in me will do the works I do.”

Many of the works that Jesus DID like performing miracles are beyond us but there’s hardly a day where we don’t have the opportunity to treat someone on the margins with the compassion that Jesus showed. Many of these people are part of our lives already but we find ways to reject or avoid them because they annoy us.  

This hit home as I was working on this reflection. I took a break to meet my swimming partner at our gym where the bane of our locker room – a lonely woman who talks non-stop to EVERYONE – latched onto us.

I was struck by the irony of writing a piece with this message and my instinctive response to “Terry.” I quickly removed my hearing aids to make conversing with her harder. Then I thought about how Jesus sought out contact with social rejects while I look the other way when I see people I’d prefer to avoid including strangers like guys on street corners asking for money. Mea culpa!

On the reverse side, I think of a woman who takes her friend’s widower to concerts even though he rambles non-stop about people she’s doesn’t know or the nun who accompanied a former colleague with Alzheimer’s who repeatedly introduced herself to people she had known for decades. Sister Mary Alice treated it like normal conversation.

It takes only a little effort to touch such lives with the compassionate acceptance that Jesus showed to people on the margins.

Just see who’s sitting alone at your church or neighborhood coffee shop and invite them to join you. We’ve recently welcomed such a woman – a warm and wonderful but lonely widow  - to our Saturday evening Mass circle. She tears up  when she says how grateful she is for her new friends for comforting her when her son died.

“I missed you so much,” she said last week after returning from a knee replacement.

Find such people who need you and you will be “doing the works I do.”