THE CLOAK

Memorial of St. Martin of Tours

Mt 25:31-40

We celebrate today the blessed memory of St. Martin of Tours who lived around the year 400. He was a very popular saint during the middle ages. He was a soldier who became a monk and eventually bishop of Tours, France. Around 4,000 churches in France are dedicated to him.

The Gospel today is very fitting for the memorial of St. Martin of Tours. Almost everyone who knows this saint remembers the story about his splitting his cloak with a beggar he met along the way. On the night of the same day, Martin dreamt about the Lord. Noticing that the Lord was wearing part of his cloak which he gave to the beggar he met that day, Martin inquired from the Lord where the Lord got the cloak He was wearing. The Lord smiled at Martin and said that He was the beggar Martin met along the way. When Martin gave part of his cloak to the beggar, it was actually to the Lord that he gave it. The claim that the Gospel today makes was proven true: “Whatsoever you do to the least of my brethren, you do it unto me.”

The same Gospel declaration remains true up until today and always. Whatever we do to anyone, most especially the least, the last, and the lost, we do it to Jesus. The reverse is likewise true: whatever good we deny to others we deny to Jesus. Let each day be a shining proof of this Gospel claim.

Quite often, it is easier to share our blessings with people we like and love, people who remember and are grateful, and people who are not choosy and pleasing to be benevolent to. The challenge always for us is to be kind to the uncaring, to be generous to the ungrateful, to be loving to the unlovable, to be compassionate to the unlikable, to be caring to the forgetful, to do good to those who cannot return our goodness. Let us pray not only to see Jesus in the distressing disguise of the poor, but also to actually love Jesus in them.

Caritas Manila has an advertisement that says, “Charity changes not only the receiver but also the giver.” In the same advertisement, a man is shown approaching a beggar whose face changed into the face of Jesus. When the man reaches the beggar sitting on the pavement, he hands him a pouch of food. Thereupon, the camera focuses on the man and his face changed into the face of Jesus too. We become more like Jesus even as we recognize and love Jesus in the needy. This indeed is what it means to become a saint: to become more and more like Jesus. Come to think of it, the poor and the needy that we help are actually the ones helping us. They help us become saints. They help us get to heaven. They help us become more and more like Jesus.

The Latin word for “cloak” is capella. The piece of cloak that Martin of Tours shared with the beggar he met along the way was preserved in a place that eventually was called “chapel”. Where charity reigns that is a “chapel”, a house of God. Ubi caritas Deus est! (“Where charity is, God is!”)