Apathy is a failure to care or attend to one's own needs or the needs of others. If one thinks about apathy in the context of illness, apathy can afflict a patient or it can afflict caregivers.
One cannot focus on God if one does not know that means caring for others. In failing to care for others, one fails to attend to the center of reality whom Christians know as God. The scene of the final judgment, from Matthew's Gospel, presents a dividing of humanity into sheep and goats on the basis of attention to other persons and their needs:
When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. Then the king, will say to those at his right hand, "Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me."
This incarnational faith that equates treatment of the sick, beggars, prisoners, and the needy with how one treats Jesus,
________________________________________Published: September 17, 2004
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