Day 29
Who Is Your Neighbor?
The Lord himself renews his invitation to all the lay faithful to come closer to him every day. And with the recognition that what is his is also their own, they ought to associate themselves with him in his saving mission. Once again he sends them into every town and place where he himself is to come.
— St. John Paul II, Christifideles Laici, 2
Jesus wants his grace to touch every human heart. He wants to lead every person out of the darkness of sin and frustration and into the spiritual light and fulfillment of his kingdom. God “wills everyone to be saved and to come to knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4).
Preparing Hearts for the Lord
Only his grace can work that redemption and pour the Holy Spirit into human hearts. Yet Jesus wants us to be the heralds who announce the Good News of his salvation and so open hearts to receive that grace. This is how he arranged things during his own earthly ministry, and that set the pattern for the rest of human history: “After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others whom he sent ahead of him in pairs to every town and place he intended to visit” (Luke 10:1).
Jesus intends to visit “every town and place” himself. He truly is the Savior, and unless he enters a heart, his kingdom cannot come there. Unless his presence in a heart deepens and expands, his kingdom cannot grow there. But he sends his disciples “ahead of him” to prepare the way, to be messengers of his kingdom and channels of his saving and sanctifying grace. When he commands us to “love your neighbor as yourself,” he points out which “town and place” he wants us to go and prepare for him: all the hearts that are within our own actual and potential circles of influence.
Bonum Est Diffusivum Sui
Have you ever noticed that evil is contagious? As the old saying goes, one bad apple spoils the bunch. Sociological studies have explored the influence of “bad apples” in the workplace, finding statistical evidence that even one employee with a habitually sour attitude has a disproportionately negative effect on the entire workplace atmosphere. If you have children, you are keenly aware of the destructive effects that can flow from them hanging out with the wrong kind of peers. Even St. Paul identifies and applies this principle, quoting an ancient proverb: “Do not be led astray: ‘Bad company corrupts good morals’” (1 Corinthians 15:33).
But the contrary is also true; goodness is also contagious. An old Latin saying puts it concisely: Bonum est diffusivum sui (“Goodness always tends to spread”). If you are a teacher or a coach, you always want students or players who work hard and build up the rest of the class or team. If you are a parent, you want your children to spend time with good kids, knowing this will have a good influence on them.
Jesus’s famous images of what a Christian is called to be, which we have already reflected on, invoke this principle. He tells his followers they are “the salt of the earth” and “the light of the world” (Matthew 5:13–14). A little bit of salt flavors a whole plate of food and preserves a much larger cut of meat. One small candle or one small lightbulb can illuminate an entire room and be seen through a window from far away. The goodness and grace that we receive from Christ always tends to spread out and touch those around us — bonum est diffusivum sui.
The neighbors we are commanded to love, therefore, are first of all every person we come into contact with. Wherever God’s providence sends us, whatever lives we touch, we can season them with love, being a blessing to them in small ways or big ways. In this sense, before reflecting on the specific forms of apostolic activity, it is worthwhile to reflect on the circles of influence that every Christian can inject with gospel goodness.
Our Circles of Influence
The circle closest to our own heart is our family, and most especially our immediate family. Then comes the circle of our friends, the people we lean on and the ones who lean on us to make life bearable, enjoyable, and meaningful. The next circle is all of our colleagues and acquaintances, those brought together with us not by our own intention, but through outside circumstances — we go to the same school, we work at the same company, we live in the same neighborhood, we go to the same parish, and so on.
Moving further out, we reach the circle of strangers, those we come into contact with only once and may never meet again, or those we only hear about or know about abstractly — the flight attendant on the plane, the help desk representative we speak to on the phone, the person who reads an article we write, the people affected by a law we help pass, the citizens of a city far away who are suffering from a recent earthquake.
Finally, our circles of influence also include our enemies — those who are actively working against what we are working for, those who are actively obstructing what we are legitimately pursuing.
These circles of influence often overlap, and their borders are porous, so that a stranger can become a friend, for example, or a family member can become an enemy. And any effect we have on any single person in any of those circles of influence will in turn affect that person’s interaction with his or her various circles of influence. And as we grow and engage in the activities of life, our circles can also expand and contract.
Beyond Math
Identifying these circles is not meant to turn our lives into some kind of mathematical diagram where we try to categorize and control everyone we meet. Rather, the point is simply to pause and reflect on the truly vast field of influence every human being exerts. Our actions and decisions are like stones being thrown into a quiet lake; their repercussions spread like ripples on the water all the way to the shore.
We don’t have to go very far to identify our neighbor. To obey the Lord’s command, to find our first and finest field of Christian mission, we only have to seek to treat those within our circles of influence as God would have us, spreading his goodness wherever we go and readying hearts to receive him ever more fully.
Questions for Personal Reflection or Group Discussion
What idea in this reflection struck you most and why?
Make a drawing that illustrates your different circles of influence. Think about all the people whose lives are touched, directly or indirectly, by your life. How does it make you feel?
Which of your circles of influence receives its fair share of your attention? Which one, if any, have you been neglecting, and why?
The closer circles of influence deserve our greater attention. Just think, for example, of the busy husband and dad who spends so much time at work that he neglects his wife and children. He has lost his center, and eventually even the good he is doing in the outer circles will suffer because of it. This is an especially important principle of discernment to keep in mind in our digital age. It’s so easy now to stay connected — at least apparently — with hundreds of people. It can lead to a dispersion of attention and a distracting fascination with merely superficial experiences and interactions. Living only on the surface of things, however, impoverishes the soul.
What will you do today to keep superficial things in their proper place?
- I will fast from my favorite social media interaction for a day.
- I will refrain from reading the latest headlines for a day.
- I will enjoy a lovely experience, and instead of taking a photo of it, I will simply let it seep into my soul and enrich me.
- (Write your own resolution) I will
Concluding Prayer
I leave you now with this prayer: that the Lord Jesus will reveal himself to each one of you, that he will give you the strength to go out and profess that you are Christian, that he will show you that he alone can fill your hearts. Accept his freedom and embrace his truth, and be messengers of the certainty that you have been truly liberated through the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. This will be the new experience, the powerful experience, that will generate, through you, a more just society and a better world. God bless you and may the joy of Jesus be always with you!
— St. John Paul II
