Once there was a boy who wanted to have a dog. His parents were poor and could not afford to buy him one. After insisting much, his mother decided to give him one hundred Baht and told him this was all she had. The boy want to a shop and saw a lot of little puppies which were lovely. He went inside the shop and asked the owner how much was one. The owner said one thousand Baht. The boy was disappointed and went back home sad. But he could not stop thinking of the beautiful puppies he had seen.
A few days later he returned to the shop and asked the owner whether he could lower the price since he only had one hundred Baht. The owner said that for this price he had a little puppy who was crippled and could hardly walk. The boy said he wanted to see this puppy. The owner brought it and showed it to him. It was very small, the two back legs were smaller than usual, and the puppy could hardly walk, much less run. The boy bought right away. The owner asked him: “Why did you buy it since it will never be normal?” The boy lifter up his trousers and showed him the braces he was wearing and told the owner. I think I can understand the puppy’s feelings very well, since I am also crippled.
Jesus was called “The Emmanuel”, the God with us, the God who knows about what it means to be weak and vulnerable, infirm and poor, insecure and fearful. God knows because God became one of us and shared our lives.
This is why in the gospel of Matthew it ways that “ He took away our infirmities and bore our diseases. ” (cf. Mt 8:17). This is why people were not ashamed to show Jesus their wounds, tell him about their hunger, and confess their sins to him. Jesus understood a man like Zaccheus who was rejected by everybody, or a sinner woman who was caught in adultery, or a group lepers who did not dear to come close to anybody but were not afraid of Jesus, or his own closest friends who were afraid to carry the cross and run away abandoning him to his enemies. Jesus understood our fears and our weaknesses, our hopes and our sorrows, because he became one of us, he was the Emmanuel.
