I saw him while driving in downtown Toronto on one of the coldest days of the year. It was not just cold, but arctic cold. It made the skin freeze and the eyes water. You don’t stroll in this kind of weather. You move fast.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a man lying on the street. I could see he had no hat and his face was pressed against the sidewalk. His only protection was a piece of cardboard. 

I parked a few blocks away and found an extra pair of gloves and a woolen toque on the backseat. I walked back to the man, unsure if he was dead or alive. I noticed many people were walking around him, eyes straight ahead. A few stepped over him while talking on their cellphones. No one was stopping. 

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Maybe they thought they had nothing to do with this man’s condition. He did this to himself. It’s not my responsibility. He was there because of a lifetime of bad choices. Not my fault. He should have known better.

I tried to get the gloves on his swollen bare hands but it was a huge effort. Then a doctor came over and took charge. A passerby asked if he could help and the doctor sent him for apple juice. Coffee apparently was the wrong thing to give a man half frozen. We rubbed his hands and tried to get him to move a bit.

Eventually an ambulance came and he was gone. At least the ambulance was warm.

During Lent, I think about the crowd that surrounded Jesus as he hung from the Cross. There were a rare few who sobbed, their hearts ripped apart. But in the main there was indifference. Some were probably just passing by, glancing at another Roman execution. Many might have had business to attend to, so there was no time to stop. Besides, you wouldn’t want to draw attention to yourself lest you make the Roman soldiers suspicious. The man on the Cross is there because of a lifetime of bad choices. Not my fault. He should have known better.

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Years ago, while studying to be a Catholic, I came across something that surprised me. This was the idea that we are all responsible for that terrible Friday afternoon. In a real sense, all of humanity was at the foot of the Cross … then, now, and tomorrow. Christ was on the Cross for the atonement of our sins and yet we still sin. 

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states: “The Church has never forgotten that sinners were the authors and ministers of all the sufferings that the divine Redeemer endured.”

The Catechism continues: “We must regard as guilty all those who continue to relapse into their sins. Since our sins made the Lord Christ suffer the torment of the Cross, those who plunge themselves into disorders and crimes crucify the Son of God anew in their hearts (for He is in them) and hold Him up to contempt.”

It goes on to state that the Jews of the time really didn’t understand who Jesus was. But we have no excuse: “We, however, profess to know him. And when we deny him by our deeds, we in some way seem to lay violent hands on him.”

This idea, I realized later, is similar to the message of Matthew 25, the parable of the separating of the sheep from the goats. 

Recall that He tells the sheep they’ll be welcome in Heaven for the way they treated Him.  They have no idea what Christ is talking about. They don’t recall helping Him. He explains they did by helping those brothers and sisters who were hungry, naked and in prison. “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.”

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As for the goats, before sending them for punishment, Jesus tells them that by ignoring the hungry, the naked and those in prison, they had ignored Him.

Jesus might have been referring to those passersby who stepped around a suffering man on a cold Toronto day. I wonder whether they will ever know that.