Below are meditations in response to the following comments made recently by a prominent human rights advocacy group.
American immigration policy should change to favor those with special skills that will contribute most to our economy and healthy young people who will spend a lifetime assimilating and paying taxes here, since we are going to need those workers soon. It should disfavor the uneducated, the middle-aged and old without special skills, and those from Muslim and other countries whose populations hate America. And, of course, multiculturalism should be abolished and replaced with the old tried-and-true melting pot model if America is to avoid balkanization. In other words, America's immigration policy should be tweaked to benefit America, not undermine her. At the same time, those persecuted in foreign lands should still have a chance to make it to freedom here. Just wanting a higher-paying job isn't enough.
MEDITATION1:
Being unwanted is the worst disease that a human being can ever experience." [Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta]
He said also to the man who had invited him, "When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your kinsmen or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return, and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just." [Luke 14:12-14]
In the beginning God entrusted the earth and its resources to the common stewardship of mankind to take care of them, master them by labor, and enjoy their fruits. The goods of creation are destined for the whole human race. Although, mankind is called to respect both the universal destination of goods and the right to private property, the right to private property does not do away with the original gift of the earth to the whole of mankind.
MEDITATION2:
As Pascal insightfully observed:
“Jesus will be in agony until the end of the world;
and we cannot sleep during this time”.
Where is Jesus in agony in our own time?
In the division of our world into belts of prosperity
and belts of poverty ... this is Christ’s agony today.
Our world is made of two rooms:
in one room, things go to waste,
in the other, people are wasting away;
in one room, people die from surfeit,
in the other, they die from indigence;
in one room, they are concerned about obesity,
in the other, they are begging for charity.
Why don’t we open a door?
Who don’t we sit at one table?
Why don’t we realize that the poor
can help the rich?
Why? Why? Why are we so blind?
PRAYER:
Lord Jesus, those who live to hoard riches
are the very ones you have called fools!
Yes, those who think they own anything
are really fools, since there is but one
Lord Jesus,
the world is yours and yours alone.
Yet you have given it to everyone
so that the earth can become a home
where all find nourishment and shelter.
So hoarding riches is robbery,
if their useless accumulation
prevents others from living.
Lord Jesus,
put an end to the scandal
that divides the world
into castles and slums.
Lord, teach us once more the meaning of brotherhood!
WAY OF THE CROSS AT THE COLOSSEUM
Led by the Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI
Good Friday 2006
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