What is our commitment to works of mercy? Ministering to our fellow human beings means ministering to the Lord Jesus himself, whose image we can see in the faces of the poor. Today’s passage from the Gospel of Matthew records speaking to his disciples on the nature of their actions as his followers. Saint Teresa of Calcutta (Mother Teresa) speaks to having the commitment to works of mercy. “In order to help us deserve heaven, Christ set a condition: that at the moment of our death you and I, whoever we might have been and wherever we have lived, Christians and non-Christians alike, every human being who has been created by the loving hand of God in his own image shall stand in his presence and be judged according to what we have been for the poor, what we have done for them.… Christ said, ‘I was hungry and you gave me food.’ He was hungry not only for bread but for the understanding love of being loved, of being known, of being someone to someone. He was naked not only of clothing but of human dignity and of respect, through the injustice that is done to the poor, who are looked down upon simply because they are poor. He was dispossessed not only of a house made of bricks but because of the dispossession of those who are locked up, of those who are unwanted and unloved, of those who walk through the world with no one to care for them.… Do we go out to meet those? Do we know them? Do we try to find them?”