Who Is Our Neighbor?

In our first reading from the Hebrew Scriptures, Yahweh declares his love for strangers and commands his people to do likewise, cautioning them not to forget that they were once strangers in the land of Egypt. We are all, without exception, descendants of those who were once strangers in this land of ours.
The responsorial psalm sings of a God who hears the cries of the poor. At this moment in our country do we hear the cries of the poor or do we listen to the deceitful rhetoric of politicians and the hateful speech and baseless conspiracy theories of social influencers?

In the Gospel, Jesus tells us that to love God and to love our neighbor is ultimately what God asks of us. Is the immigrant mother who has sacrificed everything for her children our neighbor? Is the man being deported even though he has three sons who serve in the marines because of the values he taught them our neighbor? Is the woman who works to provide home care for our sick and elderly our neighbor? Is the young man who came here as a child and loves this nation as the only country he has ever known our neighbor?

Lent is a time of heightened prayer and reflection, a time to look at ourselves and our country through the lens of our Judeo-Christian tradition. As Archbishop Gomez wrote, “…immigration is not a political issue. It is a matter of our deeply held religious beliefs. Jesus Christ commanded us to love God as our Father and to love our brothers and sisters, especially the most vulnerable, regardless of what country they came from or how they got here.”

Our elected leaders tell us that deportation efforts are focused on violent criminals who are here illegally, the so-called “worst of the worst.” We see for ourselves the mass sweeps of parking lots at Home Depot, Target and Walmart; whole neighborhoods subjected to violent occupation by masked, anonymous, paramilitary agents in full battle gear. ICE is casting a broad net not targeting individual criminals. The Catholic Bishops of California have jointly declared “in this moment, it is right to question whether our leaders truly seek peace, intend justice or are concerned with treating all people humanely. The actions of those who give orders and those who follow orders no longer reflect the values upon which our society is based, and certainly not the Christian command that we love one’s neighbor as oneself.”

The Bishops of California recognize that this administration’s indiscriminate mass deportation policies “exacerbate fear, separate families, and place already vulnerable lives at greater risk. Immigration policy must first recognize that migrants are human beings imbued with dignity and then offer solutions grounded in justice rather than fear or force.”

What possible justification is there for six masked agents shoving a man face down onto the street while his five-year-old son screams in terror? Pope Leo recently said, “when people have lived good lives—many of them for 10, 15, 20 years — treating them in a way that is, to say the least, extremely disrespectful, and with instances of violence, is troubling.” Do we simply accept explanations of authorities or do we hear the cries of that poor kid and the mother separated from her 3 children after 20 years together in this country and no criminal record? In the wake of the killings in Minnesota, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement, “no one can turn a deaf ear to the palpable cries of anxiety and fear heard in communities throughout the country in the wake of a surge in immigration enforcement actions.”

Clearly persons of faith cannot support a rhetoric that demonizes immigrants as dangerously criminal simply because they crossed the border in search of a better life for themselves and their children. As persons of faith we cannot accept a theory of love that pushes some of the poorest and most defenseless farthest from our hearts and our consciousness.

Lent is the time for us and our nation to be challenged and transformed by the Gospel, “to repent and believe in the Gospel” not in political slogans and partisan rants. Rather than justifying the brutal actions of our government, we need to hear Jesus asking us “Who was neighbor to the immigrant on the border? To the immigrant in your neighborhood? To the immigrant in detention or being deported?”

The Gospel does not offer a blueprint for how to legislate about immigration. It does offer a standard for how far we are to go in loving our neighbor as ourselves, and in refusing to accept limits on who is our neighbor. The question we need to wrestle with during this Lenten season is whether we shape our politics according to the Gospel or distort the Gospel to support a politics of exclusion and privilege.

The Gospel does not offer a blueprint for how to legislate about immigration. It does offer a standard for how far we are to go in loving our neighbor as ourselves.

Pope Leo recently challenged all persons of good will, “You have in your hands a very great task, to accompany those who need a sign that God never abandons anyone — not the smallest, not the poorest, not the foreigner, not anyone.” During this Lenten season may we find within ourselves the God-given grace to take up this task.