Each in their own way discovered that the poorest are not only objects of our compassion, but teachers of the Gospel. It is not a question of “bringing” God to them, but of encountering him among them. All of these examples teach us that serving the poor is not a gesture to be made “from above,” but an encounter between equals, where Christ is revealed and adored.
Unable to transcend entirely our location in time and space, we never see any life, including our own, in such a transcendent [“on the whole”] way. It presupposes, really, God’s own perspective; hence, in making such judgments we think of ourselves and others in terms of the relation to God. This need not blind us to the many distinctions within everyday social life, for dissimilarity is, as Kierkegaard notes, the mark (though a confusing mark) of temporal life. “But the neighbor is eternity’s mark—on every human being.” Since we stand equally distant from (or near to) the Eternal One, we are radically equal in those moments when our life is judged “on the whole,” as only God can see it.
… Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy recounts an old ritual in Austria in which
the corpse of the emperor was ordered to be carried to the door of an abbey. The chamberlain who leads the cortège knocks at the door. A friar opens the window and asks: “Who knocks?”—“The Emperor.”—“I know no man of that name.” The chamberlain knocks again. “Who is there?”—“The Emperor Francis Joseph.”—“We do not know him.” Third knock, and the same question. After reflection, the chamberlain now answers: “Brother Francis.” Then the door opens to receive a comrade in the army of death, on equal terms with all souls.”
Once again, Kierkegaard sees the point: “There is not a single person in the whole world who is as surely and as easily recognized as the neighbor. You can never confuse him with anyone else, since the neighbor, to be sure, is all people. . . . If you save a person’s life in the dark, thinking that it is your friend—but it was the neighbor—this is no mistake.” […]
The dignity of our humanity and the dignity of our person thus coinhere. We know persons only as bodies, and when we encounter a living human body our moral task is to seek to recognize the person who is there. I doubt that anyone can simply be compelled into such recognition by rational argument alone. The heart must be open to recognize personal dignity in every living human being… We must be ready to set aside the notion that we should evaluate their claim to personal dignity and accept the truth that, in our willingness or unwillingness to acknowledge it, we judge ourselves.