Let’s look at God’s Law and Order today. We speak of law allot these days. Living and upholding the law as some voices put it, “Law and Order”. As Christians how do we embrace God’s law of love as we hear it proclaimed today?

For the Israelite people law was central to their lives. The law as given by God, The Torah, and moral law and liturgical, or laws about worship. The good Israelite sought to live in accordance with these laws. The law shaped everyday living from weekly sabbath to basic daily tasks.

Today we hear,

“You shall not molest or oppress an alien,
for you were once aliens yourselves in the land of Egypt. 
You shall not wrong any widow or orphan. 
If ever you wrong them and they cry out to me,
I will surely hear their cry. “

The Lord reminds the people that they are called to live in relationship with others in a right and just way. Here the alien or immigrant, the widow and the orphan are particularly mentioned as being treated with great dignity and respect. These are  anawim who were the poor of every sort: the vulnerable, the marginalized, and socio-economically oppressed, those of lowly status without earthly power. In fact, they depended totally on God for whatever they owned. The Hebrew word anawim (inwetan) means those who are bowed down.

We are living in a time and place where we must hear this call by the Lord renewed. To see that the lives of the most vulnerable and the marginalized matter and must be protected. As the Lord our God is compassionate so too are we called to hear their cry and show compassion.

The Gospel calls us to love. To see in the face of each person, no matter, where they come from, how they, speak, look, or love. To see them as our neighbor. For most it is much easier to love the God they cannot see, than to love the person they can see. And yet that same person that they are failing to love has the presence of God in them. For we all share the Divine imprint, the DNA of God as Fr Chester Smith,SVD world day. We need to be a church and society that is truly rooted in God’s word and love God and each other as we are, not as we feel they ought to be.