We know that Jesus was especially drawn to the outcasts in his society: sinners, tax collectors, prostitutes, the blind, the lame, itinerants. These were the people on the margins of Jesus’ society, the ones who would have made all the “stable, well-to-do” people uncomfortable, and so they would have been rejected by their contemporaries, likely even seen as rejected by God. We know Jesus went to these people, reached out to them, healed them, loved them. When we hear the stories of how Jesus touched these outcasted lives, we are touched, perhaps we can recognize in ourselves something that would be rejected by others, or even by ourselves, if we allowed it to surface.

In practice, though, we all have been well-trained in rejecting others, for any number of reasons – behaviors, ethnicity, political or religious affiliation, appearance, age. The list goes on. Yet, the true contemplative gradually unlearns the art of rejection in favor of the divine art of acceptance. In our daily practice of accepting what comes to us during prayer periods, in accepting reality as it is, we naturally learn to accept another person as they are. Through contemplation, we realize that, since God excludes no one from the beloved community, we needn’t exclude anyone either, and we become free to reach out, love, and heal each other.