Reflection: Hope and Despair

Yesterday, a man wearing a black t-shirt asked me what I was doing. When I told him I was on pilgrimage to pray for immigration reform, he replied, “Good luck with that! It'll never happen.” I said that I believe it will take a miracle but that I believe God can and does work in the world. He repeated that it will never happen and walked away.

This brief dialogue has been on my mind and that man has been in my prayers. His attitude was respectful of my faith but certain that God does not answer prayers or perform miracles anymore. His body language told me I was very naïve and wasting my energy. This is a very different kind of obstacle to the anger and fear that is usually evident in the few people we are encountering who are opposed to immigration reform. One of the two or three we have met shouted “Your friends are criminals. The term is illegal immigrants. Illegal!” from his car before zooming away from us in his car. That anger requires conversion, a breaking open of a locked heart and an imprisoned point of view whether it leads the person to support reform or not.

The doubt that anything can be done, however, also requires a conversion, and the attitude of the man in the black shirt is very close to that of a neighbor who agreed that our immigration system is broken and must be fixed but did not think it is up to us to do it. Both the man and our neighbor feel powerless and they and the countless others like them deserve to experience their own power to make a difference not just in the private sphere of their lives but in the public square where, after all, we all live. It is common at this point to quote Gandhi or Martin Niemoller but I think Jesus has more to say to both kinds of fear, of the alien and of using our power.

Jesus' story of the Last Judgment in Matthew 25 teaches that small acts make a difference, and that when we welcome a stranger or feed a hungry person, we are loving God. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus tells and shows us that God loves us. When we see that the universe enfolds us in God's love, we know it is possible to take the risk of loving someone different or speaking out for justice toward the poor, the marginalized, the different. That is another lesson of this pilgrimage, that God's love is evident if we will only open ourselves to perceive it.

posted by Nick

Comments

[Mary H. Mele]

We've dropped and broken two cameras on this pilgrimage, and so are at the end of our camera budget. If you take photos and would like to share them on this blog, please email them to me at [email protected]

[Liz Gabay]

That was a beautiful comment, Nick.