Day 35: The Stranger

Read these words by Pope Francis in 2020:

“Our age calls for a class of politicians and leaders who take inspiration from Jesus’s parable of the Good Samaritan, which shows how we can develop our lives, our calling and mission. So often what we find at the bottom of it all is the issue of distance. Faced with the man left at the side of the road, some decide to walk on: distant from the situation, they prefer to ignore the facts and carry on as if nothing had happened. Imprisoned by various kinds of thinking and justifications, they pass on by.”
― Pope Francis, Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future

The Holy Father challenges us as Jesus did so many years ago to not walk away. He calls us to lovingly respond.

These days, it is easy to walk the party line, and to distance ourselves from the complexity and challenges of life. It is easy to write social media posts filled with what you think is truth, or spew your opinion around the dinner table or water cooler. Francis calls us to stop, listen, and try to understand the complexity and realities of those you quickly walk by or think you understand. He calls us to act with love.

In closing, Pope Francis warns us:

“To promote the Gospel and not welcome the strangers in need, nor affirm their humanity as children of God, is to seek to encourage a culture that is Christian in name only, emptied of all that makes it distinctive.”