A Community To Return To
A Community To Return ToI had the honor to serve with Word Made Flesh for two months in 2023 and had the joy to return for a week in 2024. I wanted to note that return week because you are entering a community which is worth returning to.
Even before my two-month service trip with Word Made Flesh Romania, Christ’s “Sheep and Goats” parable in Matthew 25 deeply worked on my heart as a core exploration for the Church’s life for others. It is one of the passages we know well, and still one we ought to return to again and again because of how meaningful, deep, and rich it is. I know I will never be done meditating on it.
The context: In the Gospel of Matthew, this teaching comes immediately before the Passion. After all the teachings and parables and warnings of judgment in chapters 24 and 25, we arrive at this scene where the Son of Man has ascended to His throne and is seated. It feels like a foretaste of the Kingdom, the eschaton, where God is reigning once again over the world.
And He says to those on His right, the sheep,
“Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”
It’s such a radical invitation: the kingdom is yours, prepared and welcoming home the beloved. You are Beloved! Those words alone are the very satisfaction of all our longing. But then comes the question: what is the basis of that invitation?
Jesus says,
“I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.”
Already, right there, that is enough to meditate on for a lifetime. The heart of God is on display. The answer to this life is given. What is the dignity of every human being–food, drink, hospitality, clothing, attention. This is what I so quickly forget; it seems in human nature to forget. I get wrapped in my own life, comfort, struggles, and I cease to look beyond me toward my neighbors. Word Made Flesh is all about looking toward neighbors that aren’t seen. In the look, they recognize the dignity in each human person. We can go no further; Christ invites us no further than such loving attention.
The Mystery of Solidarity
And then comes the holy mystery of the passage, when the sheep ask God, “Lord, when did we see You?” I love that! There is an innocence in the question: a humility. The sheep did the right things and could quickly simply accept the praise and the kingdom, and yet they will not simply accept God’s logic. They are curious—another word for directed attention. (It is also quite fun that they repeat God’s list.)
And Jesus replies,
“Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to Me.”
We can go no further: the heart of God is His solidarity with the vulnerable, his love for the brother and sister who are not dignified in the eyes of the world and who lacks, who suffers, who are overlooked. The reconciliation of all things to God is tied to this mystery of love for “the least of these.” God himself took on solidarity with their humanity in divine love; the lives of the poor are inseparable from the very life of Jesus the Christ.
The way of life is now set before the Church; we do not have to guess for what God’s heart beats. There is no abstraction, no distance afforded the Christian. We are to get close, so close. We withhold nothing in love. But, it can quickly become false if the poor, the thirsty, the prisoner, the sick, and the naked become objects of our charity. Word Made Flesh opposes this false way in its mission statement: Word Made Flesh acts by “serving Jesus among the most vulnerable of the world’s poor.” We serve Jesus; we serve Christ, who has identified his solidarity with them. We therefore serve Jesus among and alongside the poor; the work is shared and owned by all in Christ’s name. And this changes everything. It means the poor are not projects. They are not ministry opportunities. They are brothers and sisters. They have their own voice in what care looks like, what growth looks like, what healing looks like. And that means when Jesus says “the least of these my brothers,” He really means brothers.
The Children at the Center
The Children at the CenterAnd so I think about the children at the center, my brothers and sisters, whom I had the joy to live and work alongside for that summer in Romania.
The kids were lovely and dear, full of laughter and energy. They would come in after a day of school and still want to play, to talk, to pick cherries off the tree without anyone noticing because they were not allowed to. They were kids, not idealized because it was “service,” but embraced in their humanity, which was sometimes volatile, sometimes mean, sometimes deeply wounded.
One little boy believed his mother and sister had abandoned him and were living in the same city where we lived and worked but simply did not wa
nt to see him. Every night he prayed they would come home. Another little boy constantly drew devils and demons. His father struggled with alcoholism, and home was not a safe place. Another boy had lost his father in a drowning accident in the Danube River. There were no ideals which separated the work from messy day-to-day humanity and sorrow. 
There were these children, “the least of these,” to whom Christ invites us to radically love as an act of loving him. And somehow, in the middle of playing basketball, picking cherries from trees when allowed to, listening to stories, learning the language, playing worship songs, trying to be a positive role model, and carrying their stories with us, there was holy work happening.
There were moments when walking into the community center felt like walking into a glimpse of heaven. After the heaviness of the streets outside, you would step into this place filled with greenery, laughter, life, and welcome. It felt sacred. It is sacred, because Christ has bound himself to them. Sacred because Christ on his throne has invited the workers to inherit the kingdom in the dignity of all people.
What I Would Tell My Younger Self
To those who are about to depart for your service with Word Made Flesh, you are walking into holy work, the work to which Christ has called. Know you are prayed for; know you are sent. God will do extraordinary work in you and through you, all by grace and obedience.
Since that time abroad, two things have affected my soul. These two things I work through daily:
The first is anger. I felt like my eyes had been opened, and then I came home and realized so many people simply did not see. I struggled sitting in churches, worshipping and feasting together while homeless people sat outside, feeling unwelcome. I struggled with conversations about generosity and justice, constantly thinking we should be doing more. I judged others constantly. And in case the past tense offers a solution of time, be disillusioned: the anger remains. And yet, one of the things God continually reminded me, both while I was there and after I returned, is that the response must become prayer. To integrate that reminder into my life I wear a prayer bracelet from Romania associated with the Jesus Prayer, which goes,
“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”
Before I judge another—a bold claim, one I ought not make most of the time—I recall my own need for mercy. There is a kind of self-righteous anger that quickly stops looking like love. I then have missed the heart of God. I am still learning to see and remember others are brothers and sisters that I ought to love as an act of love for God. And, if I ask for mercy, how much more can God invite me to be merciful.
The second struggle is anxiety. Here we note the obvious tragedy: poverty continues to exist and affect many. The needs are endless. There is never enough we can do. And sometimes that reality made me shut down completely. I felt trapped by the pressure to do more and fix more. But what I slowly learned, and what I saw over and over again in the daily life of Word Made Flesh is that even where there is still lack, there is also dignity, joy, beauty, and life.
I remember reading Father Alexander Schmemann’s For the Life of the World with David, and one passage deeply stayed with me. Schmemann wrote,
“For behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy.’ Thus begins the Gospel, and its end is, ‘And they worshiped Him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy.’ And we must recover the meaning of this great joy. We must, if possible, partake of it before we discuss anything else, programs, missions, progress, projects, techniques.”
The work, separated from God, ceases to be the work of God. In the end, it is the joy that matters. It is the life of God. It is the heart of God we are seeking after. That is what you are being sent into. And it is what we are called to carry with us for the rest of our lives in whatever contexts God seeks to place us within. The work of compassion is heavy. The suffering is real. The injustice is overwhelming at times. But somehow, in the middle of all of it, Christ remains present among the least of these, inviting us not merely into service, but into communion, joy, and love. Do not waste the present moments you are entering, but may everything be seen as it truly is: the welcoming home of the beloved–you, and your neighbor, bound in Christ–into the Kingdom of God.
Thank you. Grace, and peace, be with you.
Timothy Fehn is a former Word Made Flesh participant who served in Romania for a summer in 2023 and revisited the WMF Romania community with a Discovery Team in 2024. He now continues his involvement as an advocate for the work of Word Made Flesh alongside serving in a local ministry in Texas. He is passionate about exploring the intersection of faith, justice, and everyday discipleship within the life of the Church.