Reflection
On recent Sunday, just as the sun peaked over the horizon to spread its light over the quiet Cincinnati suburb of Blue Ash, Ohio, hundreds of people stood to protest the actions of Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) agents who were readying scores of Haitians for deportation. Years ago, these refugees had fled their tiny island nation, the poorest in the Western Hemisphere, to escape death from gangs, poverty, and the destruction of their cities and towns from hurricanes and earthquakes. Most had legally lived and worked in the US for fifteen years and had been tax-paying, responsible members of their Springfield, Ohio community, forty-five miles away.
Who are these people standing in solidarity with Haitians in a sprawling suburb where gleaming low-storied office buildings and a modern park of broad meadows and manicured ball fields are surrounded by homes of professionals and comfortable retirees? And what did the protesters expect to accomplish?
They are predominantly faith-filled Catholics who are prophets, living out their baptismal promises. The day each of us was baptized, the priest, as he smudged the oil on our head, said,
“I anoint you according to the way of Jesus as priest, prophet, and ruler so that you may live always as a member of His body.”
To grasp what it means to be a prophet, we turn to Old Testament models. The words of the Lord in today’s first reading apply to us as much as to the prophet Ezekiel in the Fifth Century BCE: “If I tell the wicked, ‘O wicked one, you shall surely die,’ and you do not speak out to dissuade the wicked from his way, the wicked shall die for his guilt, but I will hold you responsible for his death. But if you warn the wicked, trying to turn him from his way, and he refuses to turn from his way, he shall die for his guilt, but you shall save yourself.”
Will the leaders behind the evil treatment of refugees and immigrants turn from their ways because of these Sunday morning prophetic protesters? I pray so. But if not, we are assured the ones lined up in front of the ICE office with signs asking for mercy for the Haitians are doing what our pope, bishops, and other faith leaders are also doing to address the immoral actions of our government: they are faithfully living out their baptismal promise to be prophets.
We are commanded to love everyone, even those who do unspeakable evils against the strangers in our land. As Paul writes in today’s epistle,
“Love does no evil to the neighbor,”
even if that neighbor does evil.
Jesus in the Gospel gives explicit instructions on exactly how to confront the evil doers. We do it with love, not hate. We do it communally, not as lone cowboys. And if the evil doers resist our attempts to help them change, we treat them as Jesus treated the Gentiles (remember the Canaanite woman, a Gentile, in Tyre and Sidon who pleaded with Jesus to release the demon in her daughter?) and tax collectors (Matthew, who wrote this Gospel was one of them!). How did Jesus treat these two groups of people? He loved them.
So we, too, are called to love the people whose actions we prophetically protest. Our job is not to transform anybody. God does the transforming. Our job, as prophets, is to plead, protest, and stand firm against evil. And then to love the evil doer. The rest is up to God.
We can then roll up our banners, tuck our signs and bullhorns under our arms, and go home in peace, ready for the next day’s challenge. Because our job is to be faithful, not successful.
