Prison Awareness Sunday
First reading: Ex. 22:20–26
Thus says the LORD: “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. My wrath will flare up, and I will kill you with the sword; then your own wives will be widows, and your children orphans.
“If you lend money to one of your poor neighbors among my people, you shall not act like an extortioner toward him by demanding interest from him. If you take your neighbor’s cloak as a pledge, you shall return it to him before sunset; for this cloak of his is the only covering he has for his body. What else has he to sleep in? If he cries out to me, I will hear him; for I am compassionate.”
Second reading: 1 Th. 1:5c–10
Brothers and sisters: You know what sort of people we were among you for your sake.
And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, receiving the word in great affliction, with joy from the Holy Spirit, so that you became a model for all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia. For from you the word of the Lord has sounded forth not only in Macedonia and in Achaia, but in every place your faith in God has gone forth, so that we have no need to say anything. For they themselves openly declare about us what sort of reception we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God and to await his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus, who delivers us from the coming wrath.
Gospel: Mt. 22:34–40
When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a scholar of the law tested him by asking, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”
In other words
Fr. Florencio Lagura, SVD (Christ the King Mission Seminary, Quezon City)
The second half of the last century marked exciting and dangerous times for many Filipinos. Due to the deteriorating economy, which used to be second to Japan, and a dangerous political climate, Filipinos by the thousands, suffering but never despairing, left for other countries looking for a better tomorrow, with the help of God. Among these welcoming nations was Italy.
The favorable reception from Italy, according to Fr. Louie Lapuz, SVD who at one time served as chaplain for migrant Filipinos in Rome, was not merely because Italians are Catholics, but more significantly because of the sympathy from the Italians themselves who had suffered under Benito Mussolini and the depression which ravaged Italy after WWII. Italians, by the thousands, fled to the West, settling in Argentina, but mainly in the United States of America. Having experienced, like the Hebrews of old, the horrors of political persecution worsened by steeply falling economic conditions, the next generation of Italians were more kind and gentle to exiles and strangers in their land.
Filipinos, most of them engineers, teachers, nurses, and accountants, humbly yet gratefully accepted menial tasks as drivers, gardeners, cooks, and caregivers in the Eternal City. Many hundreds more worked in Milan. Swallowing their pride, these expatriates accepted their fate in the grim hope that their families back home would be helped in more ways than one.
More importantly, these humbled but still noble, unselfish, and unsung heroes would be aided by the Lord who mandated saying, “You shall love the Lord, your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” And immediately added, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”