St. Paul says, “For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead came also through a human being. For just as in Adam all die, so too in Christ shall all be brought to life…” (1 Cor. 15:21-22) The Apostle to the Gentiles is cluing us in to an essential reality: we are all part of a single humanity, which originated in Adam. Adam sinned; we inherit that reality. Adam died; we die.
God subsequently does something utterly astounding in order to heal the broken line of Man: He becomes a part of it. In the Gospel of Luke we read the genealogy of Jesus, tracing His patrilineal descent all the way back to “Adam, the son of God.” (3:38) The One who would raise up all Mankind is the descendant of the one who causes all Mankind to fall!
Yet just as our shared humanity with Adam has with it the consequence of sin and death, so our shared humanity has consequences regarding our relationship with the Incarnate Son of God, as He fleshes out in our Gospel today. Both those on His right and those on His left exclaim, “When did we see you…?” to which Jesus replies, essentially, “When you behold your fellow man in need, you behold Me.”
For those who cared for Jesus by caring for those in need, a Kingdom is promised; for those who did not, eternal fire along with ‘…the Devil and his angels.’” Notice the “goats” are condemned not for anything they did but solely on the basis of what they failed to do. When they chose to do nothing for those in need they were, in fact, repeating the motto of Satan and his ilk: “Non serviam”…“I will not serve.” The difference between an angel and a demon is not so much a difference of what the demon did that the angel didn’t do, but rather the opposite: a demon is an angel that chose not to serve God. The difference between a “sheep” and a “goat” in this parable is the very same: the “sheep” are the ones who chose to serve Christ, not vicariously but directly by serving their brother and sister in need.
Jesus teaches us that serving Him is something active, not passive; entering the Kingdom of God is not only about avoiding sin but also about doing what is good and holy. As the maxim goes “do good and avoid evil.” It is about participating in the King’s effort to redeem the human race, not simply about staying out of the way. Our King is wrapped in mystery, but He gives us every opportunity to serve Him by calling us to serve our brother and sister with the same charity and generosity with which we would serve Him. Of course we would give Jesus food if we saw Him hungry; so why would we hesitate to feed the person He died to redeem? We come up with many an excuse, and many laws and other cultural phenomena make it difficult for us to easily do what we know in our hearts ought to be done. But how often does that mean we do absolutely nothing? Even the smallest effort, if that is all we can manage, is far better—literally the difference between Heaven and Hell—than doing nothing at all.