Our God loves to remain hidden. In a tiny Baby born into poverty, in a condemned Criminal beaten and mocked and crucified, in a small white Host that still looks and tastes like bread. Even in His resurrection, His disciples often did not recognize Him at first.
Indeed, He is so hidden that He is acknowledged by few. In all of Jerusalem and Bethlehem, only the shepherds and the Magi, both groups considered outsiders, joined Mary and Joseph in recognizing the Christ in the Baby lying in the manger. During His Passion, He was mocked, scourged, crowned even with thorns, all before suffering the most horrible form of execution the Romans could devise, crucifixion. "So marred was His look beyond human semblance" (Isaiah 52:14) that He may have been unrecognizable even as a man, much less as God. Certainly, many of the onlookers failed to recognize Him. Only His Mother Mary, His apostle John, and a few other women saw the bloody crucifixion and still believed He was Lord. Most of His followers themselves had deserted Him. Some, like the two disciples on the road to Emmaus after His resurrection, who said, “We had hoped He was the one…” ceased to believe in Him (Luke 24:21, emphasis added). He was hidden in His Passion even from many who had formerly believed in Him, and even once He rose, those same disciples failed to recognize Him.
And today in the Holy Eucharist, He hides Himself, not only in our frail humanity, not only in the depths of suffering, but even as our Food! How few see the Lord and know Him in the Eucharist, even among those who claim to know and follow Him, even among many who say they believe the Church’s teaching on the Eucharist. But to know about Him is not enough! Do you really know Him?
Yet still, He comes to us today in a disguise perhaps even more shocking at times. Look to your neighbor: the stranger who cuts you off in traffic, the spouse who just does not seem to understand your pain, the children who will not listen and obey, the priest who preaches a dull homily, the family member who makes cutting remarks, the next-door neighbor who seems to have it all together, the coworker who did not meet the deadline yet again… Can you see in these people, in the words of St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Jesus “in His distressing disguise”? He hides Himself there waiting for your love and compassion.
Perhaps for some of us, the place where He is sometimes most hidden from view is within ourselves. In you, too, is Jesus in His distressing disguise. By the power of His resurrection and by virtue of your Baptism, He lives in you! Find Him hidden in the depths of your soul, in the soul of your neighbor, in the tabernacle. He who came 2,000 years ago to die and rise to save you is hidden but not absent and not unapproachable. He waits for you in these disguises to shower you with His mercy and love and to live His own life in you. Will you recognize Him?
Sr. Mary Martha Becnel is a member of the Ann Arbor-based Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist.
