There is no doubt that we live in very troubled times. Many people feel oppressed and marginalized, and many others find it difficult to catch up in the face of many struggles and conflicts. The readings for this 30th Sunday of the liturgical year urge us to open our eyes to those in society who need our love and care.
The first reading from Exodus 22 identifies four classes of people in the society who are easy victims of oppression and marginalization. These are: the stranger, the widow, the orphan, and the poor. In the ancient traditional society, these groups were often denied their rights. The situation is not much changed in today’s society, despite its claimed achievements in development and enlightenment. In our local communities, many from these groups (the stranger, the widow, the orphan and the poor) suffer terribly, as they are often either neglected or maltreated.
The text of Exodus 22 makes it a law to treat them well, and this is set in one of the oldest legal codes in the Bible. Our reflection centers on caring for these vulnerable members of the society.
The Stranger
The first in the list, the stranger, must be treated well with both sympathy and empathy. While sympathy involves caring about another’s pain, empathy goes deeper: it means feeling as if we were the ones in pain. In relating to the stranger, the Israelites are reminded never to forget that they themselves were once strangers in a foreign land. But we often forget that, in one way or another, we are all strangers wherever we find ourselves today. In many communities, strangers are not only denied their basic rights, but they are also maltreated and exploited. Many conflicts in today’s society stem from fear of difference and an inability to accept the other as a brother or sister. There is often a tendency to heap stereotypes on strangers or migrants in order to justify their maltreatment. Sometimes, we pretend to be welcoming to strangers as long as they don’t claim any rights, but immediately they begin to demand the good things we enjoy exclusively, the trouble begins.
The Widow and the Orphan
The other classes of the oppressed are the widow and the orphan. Widows are easy targets of oppression because they are often regarded as strangers or aliens in their husbands’ families. In the ancient Israelite society, the widow was often deprived of her right to her husband’s property, as this accrued to the husband’s brothers. This mostly happened when the widow had no male inheritor. Thus, the widow remained very poor and downtrodden. God calls Himself the Husband of the widow and imposes terrible threats on all who oppress widows.
The same applies to orphans. God regards Himself as the Father of the fatherless. In the Bible, orphans are not only those who have lost both parents but, most importantly, those who have lost their father. Such people, especially when they are still very young, are often disinherited by more powerful and greedy uncles. God, thus, threatens the oppressors as He remains the Father of the fatherless.
The Poor
The fourth group consists of those qualified as the poor. The Bible describes them as the needy and the afflicted (the anawwim in Hebrew). They often depend for their existence on borrowing, and in this they are terribly exploited and often reduced to slavery. When such people cry to God in their pain and oppressed condition, He quickly hears and their oppressors never go unpunished, either now or in the future.
These are strong warnings for us, given our often nonchalant attitudes toward those who live on the margins and social periphery. Today’s Word of God challenges us to broaden our vision and understand the real God we worship in the context of loving all His creatures without discrimination.
In today’s Gospel from Matthew 22, Jesus presents the love of God and the love of neighbor as the greatest and summary of all the Commandments of God. This implies that this is the only way to be not just a follower of Jesus but a true worshipper of God. Recognizing the true meaning of love depends on real conversion to the true God. Paul speaks to the Thessalonians about this conversion in the Second Reading. People must turn from the old ways of Idol worship to embrace the new religion of love in Jesus.
It means that we cannot claim to worship God in any religion if we are unable to love our fellow human beings. We pray that we may understand that the true God we worship is a God of love, and that through this understanding we may continue to grow in love of one another!
[Readings: Exodus 22:20-26; 1 Thessalonians 1:5c-10; Matthew 22:34-40]
