Apologies on the title of this post: the Oasis lyrics from “Live Forever” always seem to pop into my mind when blogging.

Sometimes we don’t want to know who someone is, so we never try to find out who they are.

This sounds somewhat esoteric, but it’s really simple. For example, I may not want to find out who someone is because I have made a pre-judgment of them in one or more of the following ways:

1. I judge the person to be of no “use” to me, and even to be a “drain” on me
2. I am afraid of being judged by the person because I do things that they think are wrong
3. I am repulsed by what someone stands for or a belief they have
4. I am repulsed by someone’s physical appearance
5. I am repulsed by what someone has done

The problem with this is, when we put someone into a box for one of the above reasons, we rob ourselves of the opportunity to get to know them as a person and to grow in a relationship with them, losing the chance to enrich their life as well as our own.

We all do this to one degree or another, and sometimes it is okay to do, as you shouldn’t feel obliged to get to know every single person you ever meet or see and discover their life story. But often, the people we do this to are not the beggars on the street, but rather the people with whom we work for hours everyday or even the people who are supposed to be closest to us: our families.

One person who never acted in this way, but instead always wanted to know people and have people in turn know him was Jesus.

The Pharisees threw an adulteress woman at his feet and had stones in their hands ready to kill her. Jesus turned their trap upside-down, and they all dropped their stones and left–all except the woman. Jesus spoke with love to her, after saving her life, and told her that he did not condemn her and that she should live her life for love, not lust.

Another time, Jesus went and ate with a tax-collector, which was a universally reviled profession in the Rome-occupied Near East during Jesus’ days. Jesus told those who rebuked him for eating with a sinner that he had come to save sinners and heal all people of the wounds that sin caused them.

Jesus really wanted to know each person because he loved them. He accepted each person exactly where that person was in their life, and then he called them upward from the life of shame that they had been living to the life of grace that comes from receiving Jesus’ mercy and love.

I propose what our Church has always proposed, that we do what Jesus did. What if we really sought to get to know someone in our family better at the next gathering, someone perhaps from whom we have always felt estranged, someone with whom we have had harsh words in the past that have not healed?

What if we make the effort, with God’s help, to go into work and engage people in conversation with the goal of truly growing in friendship with them, to genuinely desire to get to know them?

How can we do this?  Here are some starter questions:

1. What makes you happy?
2. What do you do at work (and then really listen and ask follow-up questions)?
3. (If they have children:) What milestones has your child been reaching lately (first steps/words/sentences, etc.)
4. What did you get your college degree in?  How did you decide on that field?

Let us pray for our Lord’s help and begin to get to know, maybe for the first time, those people who should be closest to us!