Daily Meditations for Lent 2006

Mar 6 - Monday

Leviticus 19:1-2,11-18

Isn’t it ironic that in this age of globalization and mass communication, we can still feel so isolated from one another? In the movie Hotel Rwanda, a true story set during the 1994 Rwanda genocide, an American journalist predicts how his side of the world will react to the news of mass ethnic cleansing in Africa: “If people see this footage, they’ll say, ‘O my God, that’s horrible!’ And then they’ll go on eating their dinners.”
This isolation and indifference is not what God intended for us. He wants us to be like brothers and sisters, not strangers! The fact is, we all belong to one another. And that belonging is not just some over-sentimental idealism; it is real and it has consequences.

In today’s reading from Leviticus, each command God gives his people is followed by the proclamation, “I am the Lord.” It’s as if God is telling us what kind of God he is, and who he is not. Judging from this passage, we can see that he is concerned not only with our eternal destiny but with our becoming like him here on earth. This means taking on his love and concern for the world. As Archbishop Oscar Romero once related: “The church’s social teaching tells everyone that the Christian religion does not have a merely horizontal meaning, or a merely spiritualized meaning that overlooks the wretchedness that surrounds it. It is a looking at God, and at one’s neighbor as a brother or sister, and an awareness that ‘whatever you did to one of these, you did to me’ (Matthew 25:40).”

In Hotel Rwanda, the manager of a luxury hotel first insists, “I have no means to protect these people” [refugees from the killings]. But ultimately he finds the courage to hide 1,268 strangers in his hotel and save them from certain slaughter. While this situation represents an extreme case, in little daily ways we all have opportunities to increase our sense of solidarity with those around us, especially the needy and suffering. Will you take up the challenge? If so, you just may meet someone amazing in the most unlikely of your neighbors—and that someone is Jesus himself!

“Holy Spirit, open my eyes and heart to those around me. Help me to meet Christ in the poorest and most vulnerable of my neighbors. Bring us all together as one family in God.”

posted by Thomas Cagurangan @ 9:25 PM