Updated. “On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
26 “What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”
27 He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’[a]; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
28 “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”
29 But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
30 In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. 31 A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. 32 So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. 34 He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. 35 The next day he took out two denarii[c] and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’
36 “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”
37 The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”
Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”
Note: I believe in principled, legal immigration. And I reject all utopian schemes for a supposedly borderless world as I have written here elsewhere.
I also reject Donald Trump’s grotesque characterizations of practically all migrants as criminally insane, a threat to us all, etc. I also reject the Utopian exploitative cynicism of today’s Democrats. So, how should we then live?
Those of us who seek to know the gospel should know.
We can show practical compassion to all human beings made in the image and likeness of God wherever and whenever we can, and wherever they come from. We are to judge persons only by the content of their characters, even as we seek practical solutions to real problems beyond the selfish, cynical, bipartisan politics which uses migrants as pawns in the quest for more power. SH.
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Catholic Critique 