Devotional by Catherine de Hueck Doherty

Today, across a confused world, people seek Christ! They seek the reality of Christ, or, to put it another way, they seek the real Christ, the Christ of the gospels, the one they have read about but cannot seem to find. In this seeking people ask one another, “How do you find Christ? Where is he? Where can I find him?” Who then, is this Christ that they seek? Why does he seem to be so elusive, so unreal, so difficult to meet? It seems to me that the answer to these questions is exceedingly simple: we meet Christ in a real Christian.

What is strange and seemingly simplistic answer! Yet it is the true answer, and I don’t think there is another. People have to be shown. The time of mere talking is over.

After his resurrection, Christ showed his disciples his wounds and they believed. These wounds were visible signs of Christ’s love for them and for all of us.  no one needed to say anything, least of all Christ. Thomas the Doubter was the only one who spoke. 

Today, it seems to me, we must likewise show the wounds of Christ to people, for then they will believe. This is what people are seeking today: someone who will show them the wounds of Christ so that they made touch him and be reassured.

 But we must go further. Christ prepared breakfast on the beach for his friends. We, too, by our service, must show how much we love our brothers and sisters, all those who are seeking the Lord. But even all this–  to show the wounds, to prepare meals–  it’s not enough. One must open one’s heart with a lance by taking that lance in one’s own hands.  We must accept all human beings as they are, without wanting to change or to manipulate them. It is a benediction and a joy in itself that they come to us.

People will not know God unless we, their neighbors, their brothers and sisters, show Christ to them in the tremendous love that Christ has for them. This is the acceptable time, so that people may once again say what was said of the early Christians, “ see how these Christians love one another–  and us!”

 Yes, we must open the doors of our hearts.  We must open the doors of our homes. We must accept people as they are. We must serve them, and we must show them the wounds of our love…

No, words are not enough. But a loving glance, a wound, a breakfast cooked for a friend, a welcome through an Open Door into an open heart, these will do it. It is only then, when my brother and my sister have been filled with my supper, when they have beheld my wounds of love for them, when they have experienced a totality of acceptance, that they will be open to the glad news.