Piety
Today, Lord, I long to see your face. With your help I will offer new life to others by being aware of your presence and reacting to each and everyone as if their face is yours. Grant me new life as I inevitably forget you but recollect, try again, and forgive myself. Let me look to St. Francis Xavier Cabrini as one who said yes to a new life and brought new life to hundreds of immigrants through her service. Help me to ascend your holy mountain and stand in awe, humbled and gracious.
Study
God is life-giving, life affirming in all ways. God just loves life with glee and delight, given the diversity, the wonder, the awesome spectacle of life all around us.
Paul teaches Titus, his disciple, how to choose leaders within the newly forming Christian communities: a new life for those chosen. The bishops and presbyters will live a new life pointedly representing the “message as taught.” These leaders are entrusted to bring others to new life in Christ. “For a bishop as God’s steward must be blameless, … hospitable, a lover of goodness, temperate, just, holy, and self-controlled, holding fast to the true message as taught.” (1 Titus 1:7-9)
The psalmist reconfirms the life-giving nature of God, “The LORD’s are the earth and its fullness; the world and those who dwell in it. For he founded it upon the seas and established it upon the rivers.” The psalmist goes on to say to whom God gives the gift of life: “He whose hands are sinless, whose heart is clean, who desires not what is vain.” (Psalm 24: 2, 4) We – like our spiritual ancestors the Israelites - long to see God’s face out of a yearning deep within our hearts, a yearning which is rooted deep in God’s creation. We must choose this “new life” in order to “see God’s face” – it is free, and for our taking.
Then Jesus gives us a new twist. Life is not only a gift for us but is for us to gift to others. Forgiveness affirms life as it wipes away the death of sin and broken relationships. Forgiving “if he wrongs you seven times in one day and returns to you seven times saying, ‘I am sorry,’ you should forgive him” (Luke 17:4) is a symbolic way of saying that there can never be too much complete forgiveness. That we forgive and forget gives new life to someone. Yes, we must be aware of sin and not accept it in others or ourselves. But we do not stop there. New life – forgiveness – is available.
The Apostles knew how difficult this is. “Increase our faith” they ask Jesus. He replies that the size of faith is not important. What is important is that our faith is rooted in God through whom all things are possible. Through God we can be givers of new life: “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.” (Luke 17:6)
In God all things are possible: A tree growing in salt water sea … a widow giving her last coin and receiving the approval, the blessing, of the son of God … a prodigal son returning home to a welcome feast … an impoverished daughter of farmers leaving her home in Italy, serving others and finding a place next to the seat of God … my doubts about immigrants turning to welcome …
http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=278
Action
Consider your own immigrant roots. Like the Israelites, most of us have family that found a refuge and new lives in a new country, perhaps a new faith. How can we as Catholic Christians welcome newcomers to our shores and model the welcome that Jesus gives to those who choose new life?
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