Fr. Don's Daily Reflection - December 14, 2024
Psalm 62: “In you alone is my soul at rest. My help comes from You.”
Advent: Who’s coming? Whose 'advent' is it? Jesus Christ, of course, Lord, Son of God and Son of Mary. Most immediately He's coming across the Mediterranean, the Rio Grande, through the Balkans, driven from her home by war, poverty, persecution or oppression. In Matthew 25 Jesus tells us that it is him we are serving when we help the stranger, the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the imprisoned and the sick. Today these are migrants and immigrants from Syria, Africa, Asia, Central and South America. He is present in these as well as in the congregation at Mass or in the tabernacle.
Yet, as Pope Francis has pointed out, there is an “epidemic of animosity” against people of other races or religions which hurts the weakest in society. And “how quickly those among us with the status of a stranger, an immigrant or a refugee become a threat, take on the status of an enemy. . . . An enemy because they come from a distant country or have different customs . . . because of the color of their skin, their language or their social class. An enemy because they think differently or even have a different faith.”
We of the ‘First World’ are stewards, not absolute owners, of most of the world’s wealth and goods. We act as if we had an unquestionable right to them, that we can build walls and fences to “protect our property and goods”, to hug them to ourselves rather than share them with our displaced and suffering brothers and sisters in this one human race.
Most of us North Americans are the sons and daughters, the descendants of immigrants from Ireland, Germany, Russia, Italy, Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, etc. They came as those strangers Jesus speaks of with the hope of the better life many of us now enjoy. A welcome to today’s strangers and displaced is a welcome to Jesus.
Psalm 27: “I believe I shall see the Lord’s goodness / in the land of the living.
Wait for the Lord; be strong; / be stouthearted, and wait for the Lord!”
