Michel Quoist
MEET CHRIST AND LIVE!

translated by J. F. BERNARD
GILL AND MACMILLAN

4. I'm too good a neighbor

l was coming home from work the other evening when l ran into my neighbor in front of the house. 'I wonder if you'd have a minute to look at our washing-machine,' he asked. 'I don' t seem to be able to get it started.'
'Of course,' I answered. 'Let me go in and tell my wife I'm home, then I'll come right over.'
A few minutes later, I was at work on his washing machine. 'It must be nice to be handy,' he said. 'I can see that you know what you're doing.' I was delighted. It's a wonderful feeling to be admired and envied. As I gathered up my tools, I told him: 'That should do it. Let me know if you have any trouble. I'll be glad to come over any time.'
I went home in high good humor. I was happy because l had been 'charitable to my neighbor'. But a question from my wife destroyed my mood completely. 'Did you explain to him what was wrong with it,' she asked, 'so that, next time, he'll be able to fix it himself?'
I had not even thought of it. Perhaps because I was looking forward too much to the next opportunity I would have to show him how clever I was, and how 'charitable'.

The children were in bed. My wife, Georgette, and I were sitting at the table, talking about our attitude towards our neighbors.
We have the reputation among our friends (and in our own eyes) of being 'nice, helpful people'. Everyone knows that they can always count on us. It' s the same way at my office, and, in fact, in my whole life.
I don' t mean to say that that is bad. But we recognize that it is very limited, and very dangerous; and we have drawn the following conclusions:
We often derive enormous self-satisfaction from doing favours for people, and we are proud of what we regard as our 'neighborliness'.
We often do things for our neighbors that we don' t really want to do - and we do them only to preserve our self-esteem and not to lo se our reputation as 'nice' people.
Above all, we tend to take the easy way out - i.e., to give things to our neighbors, while Jesus asks us to do something much more difficult: to help them to become self-sufficient, and (what is even harder) to give of themselves.
We had to think about it only a few minutes to discover many things in our lives that proved our attitude to be wrong. Georgette, for instance, spends a good deal of time running errands for an invalid woman in our building. She hasn't tried to get other neighbors to help, and she hasn't even thought of organizing half-a-dozen of them in such a way that the invalid would have a different helper every day.
I'm no better. Sometimes, I do my son's homework for him instead of helping him to do it himself.
Georgette sometimes bakes a cake for a friend of hers on the third floor. But she's never thought of giving her the 'secret' recipe so that she can make it for herself. And she knits scarves and sweaters for us - but she hasn't bothered to teach our daughter how to knit.
Neither of us has ever asked our neighbors to help us with any of our problems.
Just a few days ago at work, I spoke to my employer on behalf of one of my fellow workers. It never occurred to me that I should have encouraged him to speak for himself, or at least to come with me while I spoke for him. And there have been innumerable instances of this kind. (1)
Jesus acted very differently when he walked among men.
At Cana, he turned water into wine-but not until the water had been drawn by the servants of the house.
When he spoke to the Samaritan woman, he began by asking her for a service: a drink of water.
When he wished to feed the people, he started with the bread and the fishes that a boy in the crowd had given him.
And of Zacchaeus, he demanded a place to stay.
Jesus, in other words, used the same methods as his Father. The Father insists on involving us in his work. With him, we must complete the creation of the universe by our work, and the creation of mankind by means of the family. If the Father acted alone, the work, no doubt, would be more perfect-but man would be less great.
The mystery of the Creation and that of the mystically continuing Incarnation and Redemption of Christ require our free participation if they are to be realized in human history. It is God and man, together, who are building the Kingdom.

We, however, have not used the methods of the Father. How humiliating it is to need other people, and how satisfying it is to be needed by others. Too often, we keep our friends in a state of dependence on us. Even if they are willing to accept that arrangement, either out of laziness or because they do not recognize the situation for what it is, we do not have the right to impose it without offering them, at the same rime, the opportunity to grow.
Christians must not be those who 'have' and who 'take care' of the have-nots. We must be men who come as equals, to share what we have.
We must not be men who are always needed, but men who sometimes need others.
We must not be men who are always giving, but men who also lead others to give.
When we give someone something, he has something which he did not have before. But so far as he himself is concerned, he has not been changed.
When, on the other hand, we help someone to become a better person, we allow him to become more a man-a free and generous son of God, as the Father intends him to be. And what greater service can we render a man than to make him more of a man?
Every time that we teach someone how to give, even if it is through the smallest gesture in our everyday lives, we lead him on to the path of the Father; we join ourselves to the great redeeming effort of Jesus by releasing man from the slavery of sin and making of him Jesus' friend, his collaborator in the building of the Kingdom, in Love.

Lord, we've fallen into the habit of always being neighborly. We're the St Bernards of everyone we run into. We know what to say,
when to smile,
what to do.
Yes, Lord, we're good and faithful servants; 
but we'll never learn to be more than that
As long as, without knowing it, and because of us,
other people remain unimportant while we remain important,
they remain poor while we hold on to our wealth; 
and we don't know what to do with ourselves if ever they don't need us any more.

Help us, Lord, to be good neighbors, but without loving less than we should. 
Help us to make others grow large and ourselves grow smaller,
by giving less and asking more, 
by making saviors out of other people instead of being saviors ourselves.
If we can do that, Lord, then
we won't be benefactors,
and we won't be father-figures,
we'll be brothers to our brothers.

[1] This chapter is not concerned with collective action in unions, political organizations, etc., not because such action is irrelevant, but because the family in question is not politically oriented. What we were doing in this particular meeting was trying to make this couple overcome their paternalisric attitude towards their neighbors.