Nehemiah 8:2-10 Ezra the priest-scribe read plainly from the book of the law of God, interpreting it so that all could understand what was read. Your words, LORD, are Spirit and life. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor.
Today’s reading from the book of Nehemiah is a curious one. We hear a puzzling description of the entire Jewish community – men, women, and children – standing together in a great plaza listening “attentively” for six hours as Ezra the priest explained to them the Torah, i.e., God’s instructions for their daily life. It was, in effect, a ceremony of recommitment. Ezra realized that the Jewish people, having spent some 70 years in exile in a foreign country and culture, had become religiously illiterate. Although those Jews were delighted to be back in their homeland, knowing how exactly to serve God had become for them something of a lost art. That public instruction on the Torah by Ezra, therefore, encouraged them to realize how helpful God’s precepts could be for them. Far from groaning under the burden of those commandments – there were, after all 613 of them – the Jews began to weep with joy because they were so moved.
Somehow, they felt closer to God because God loved them enough to provide guidelines and to set boundaries for them.
Today’s responsorial psalm also gives some intimation of the reverence that the Jews had for God’s law. The psalmist sings: “The law of the LORD is perfect, refreshing the soul … the precepts of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart.”
I think that attitude toward law is quite different from the attitude of many Catholics today. If instead of reading the gospel this morning, I had spent six hours proclaiming: “The chief commandments of the church are: You must attend Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation; you must abstain from meat on all the Fridays in Lent; you must make your Easter duty …,” I hardly think that your reaction would have been “How wonderful God is to us. I’m so moved that I want to cry.” Nevertheless, that was the genuine reaction of Israel.
Why do you suppose it’s so different for us? Why is it that too often we see God’s law as something burdensome? Somewhere along the line, we seem to have lost a sense of the goodness, the wholesomeness of God’s law and have come to regard it, instead, as something restricting our freedom. And that, my friends, is simply wrongheaded. As for the Jews, so too for us Christians: God gives us the Law, the Torah, as a moral compass for how we should live. If we follow the guidance of Jesus’s words and the example of Jesus’s action, God promises, we will thrive, and so will everyone else on earth.
However, some actions of our recently re-elected president have raised grave concerns for some of us on matters of national importance, for instance, the treatment of immigrants and refugees, the slashing of foreign aid, the expansion of the death penalty, and the cynical indifference to
efforts to protect the environment. Archbishop Timothy Broglio, president of the U.S. Bishops’ Conference, has appropriately expressed concern that many of these provisions will disproportionately harm the most vulnerable among us. It seems to me that this administration’s hasty and radical reversal of our national priorities and its minimizing of gospel values, obliges us as conscientious, Catholic citizens to ponder more seriously God’s law and then, discern how God wants us to evaluate and respond to these challenges. Perhaps the most pressing cause for alarm concerns the policies related to immigration because, on a practical level, they will have a devastating impact on the lives of millions of people uprooting them from families, communities and jobs that have sustained them for many years.
On a more fundamental level, the harshness of these measures betrays a willful disregard for the God-given dignity of all human beings. While safeguarding American communities and upholding the rule of law are legitimate goals, at the same time, our nation’s right to regulate its borders and enforce its immigration laws must be balanced with our responsibility to uphold the sanctity of all human life – citizen and non-citizen alike – and to enact policies that further the common good. Moreover, the dehumanization of noncitizens, describing them as “criminals, drug dealers, and rapists,” as a pretext for depriving them of protection under the law is not only contrary to the law but an affront to God himself, who has created these women and men in his own image.
“Have we not all one Father?” pleads the prophet Malachi. “Did not the one God create us all? Why then do we break faith with one another, defiling the covenant [that God made with] our ancestors?” (Malachi 2:10) Don’t think me naïve about the formidable complexities involved in immigration reform. There are, indeed, legitimate concerns about public health and border security. Nevertheless, the intractability of these issues does not absolve us from the obligation of working earnestly toward a more humane solution. And that solution, while it necessarily includes a proper assessment of our resources, is not exhausted by such analysis. In fact, it doesn’t even begin with analysis.
Rather, it begins with a change of heart where we begin to acknowledge every woman, man, and child as part of our one human family. Only when we acknowledge them as sister and brother will we have sufficient good faith and determination to seek solutions that reflect God’s dream for all God’s children.
I’d like to make a proposal. As a Church, whenever we seek conversion, that is, a change in how we see things, we have come to rely on a triad of practices: prayer, fasting and almsgiving. Might I suggest that over the next week, you commit to spending three minutes in prayer each day asking God to grant us – as individuals and as a nation – a deeper realization of our connection to all other human beings, especially with those who suffer most.
Secondly, perhaps you might practice one small sacrifice each day: forgoing your pistachio latte one day, a glass of wine the next, a favorite video game the following. It’s only symbolic, ofcourse, but it’s a powerful signal to God that we desire this change of heart enough to inconvenience ourselves ever so slightly.
Lastly, almsgiving. At the end of the week, if you can, make a contribution to some organization that works with migrants and refugees like the Jesuit-sponsored Kino Border Initiative, or to some organization that advocates on behalf of immigrants and refugees like Jesuit Refugee Service.
Let me close by acknowledging with gratitude the work of our own parish’s Migrant Team Ministry. Since 2017, when we welcomed our first refugee family from Syria, our parish has continued to accompany and advocate for refugees. Today, thanks to your generosity, Holy Trinity now accompanies 27 families from 12 different countries. May God increase our awareness of others like them and inspire us to even greater solidarity with them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQ-5LTKABFg&t=1955s
Homily begins at 21:50