God’s criteria for judging us: The Gospel reminds us that Jesus came to preach good news to the poor. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it, “Jesus shares the life of the poor, from the cradle to the cross; he experiences hunger, thirst, privation. Jesus identifies himself with the poor of every kind and makes active love of them the condition for entering his kingdom” (n 544).
Jesus declares that the sole criterion for judgment is love for the poor and the needy. The simple things that Jesus asks, everybody can do: feeding the hungry, giving thirsty people a drink, making strangers welcome, providing covering for the ill-clothed, comforting the sick, and visiting those in jail.
All of these can be interpreted literally: the whole world has more than its share of the homeless, the hungry, and the otherwise needy. But often we are called to meet needs which require looking below the surface and demand creativity and initiative. With the hungry, for instance, creativity and initiative may suggest feeding people’s hunger for knowledge by volunteering at a literacy organization, feeding people’s hunger for companionship by welcoming a new neighbor in for coffee, or feeding the hunger for intimacy by lending our ear to people in need of sympathy.