They will have been very surprised. They did not know who Jesus was, perhaps had never heard of him, or quite simply had not concerned themselves with him directly—not when their hearts were moved by the sight of men and women who were suffering. Perhaps they were Christians, perhaps not. They saw only people whom others had failed to recognize in their personal dignity, and something in them broke open. They thought—or perhaps did not think at all—that love was enough: to give of your time, without counting the cost, with abundance and complete freedom.
The tradition of the people of Israel, the Bible, the First Testament, had spoken of this profoundly human attitude. It had recognized in it a way of being divine—so deeply human that it could only be a sign of a God of love. The prophet Isaiah said that a man would come who would bring good news to prisoners of liberation, to the blind the gift of sight, to the oppressed their freedom. Jesus, the first time he spoke in public, in the synagogue at Nazareth, said that in his understanding, the prophet's words described perfectly what he himself meant to do.
Feed the hungry. Clothe the naked—those without any protection against cold or crushed beneath the weight of shame. Visit the sick and the imprisoned, the cast out, the rejected unloved. Yet Jesus did not simply mean to give of his goods, his wealth. He meant to identify himself with the hungry (as he did in the desert, tempted by the devil), to identify himself with those who had nothing (he had nowhere to lay his head), to identify himself with those in prison (as he hung on the cross, between two thieves).
Strange and wondrous destiny: Jesus, savior of the hungry (the multiplication of loaves), of the naked (his stance as the good Samaritan), of the imprisoned ("this very day you will be with me in paradise"). In doing this, Jesus acted as God acts—making no distinction among persons, loving all with the deepest love of his heart. Jesus was not merely a sign of God's love. He was the love of God made flesh, present among us.
Stephen, you knew these things.
—Paul Gilbert, S.J., 2015