The Sioux City area has a tremendous history of immigrant people.
1. “You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. You shall not afflict any widow or orphan.” Exodus 22:21
2. When God brought the Israelites out of Egypt he made a covenant or pact with them on Mount Sinai. In this pact he promised to bring them into the promised land and to be ever with them, provided they, on their part, kept certain rules of conduct which are written down in the “Book of the Covenant” in Exodus 19: 1-24 : 18. The verses read to us today cover the Israelites’ duties toward strangers (non-Israelites), widows and orphans and the poor in general. They are a practical application of the law of charity in their dealings with their neighbors.
3. The Great Commandment is …‘You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart…and the second is like it…you shall love your neighbor as your self.”
4. In this section of his gospel (21: 23-22: 46), Matthew, after describing Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem on the Sunday before his crucifixion, gives us a series of the attempts made by his enemies, the Pharisees and Sadducees, to catch Jesus in some legalistic or political error. Today’s question concerned the greatest commandment in the law of Moses. They had many disputes among themselves as regard this question. Christ’s clear-cut answer was that the two commandments of love of God and neighbor were the essence of the Old Testament and the basis for the New Testament. This was not only an answer for the Pharisees but an answer and a rule of life for all of us for all time.
5. There is a BIG LIST of persons/nationalities that deserve our attention as Catholics and inheritors of God’s Covenantal Law.
Any immigrant, Native Americans,
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