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When we go shopping these days the till slip often tells us the name of the person who served us. Some years ago I went shopping for underwear and was served in the store by a rather handsome young man. When I got home and looked at the till slip it said, ‘Today you were served by Jesus’. This took me considerably aback, until I remembered that the young man had a Hispanic look about him, and was probably from Latin America, where the name Jesus is common enough for men.

This event set me wondering about the many random encounters we have on a daily basis. People cross our lives in all sorts of ways, but unless we’re particularly attentive, we barely notice them, and pass on regardless. Yet the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins writes, ‘Christ plays in ten thousand places, Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his To the Father through the features of men's faces.’

Christian legend is full of people who come across Christ unawares. In these stories he often appears as a child, a beggar, someone sick, lame or disfigured, and is only revealed by the charity of the person who receives him willingly and with compassion. The young man who served me in the shop may have had no thought of doing so in the place of his namesake, but St. Teresa of Avila writes,

‘Christ has no body now, but yours […] Yours are the eyes through which he looks with compassion on this world’.

Every service we do for another, however banal or trivial, every kind word, look or gesture is a sharing in God’s attention to us. Loving Father, help us in all our encounters to be a reminder to each other of your loving presence among us. Amen.