Now we are at the second day of Lent. Yesterday, on Ash Wednesday, Newark Cardinal Joseph Tobin was permitted to enter Delaney Detention Center to say mass, offer ashes, and carry out his religious obligations. Yesterday, as well, U.S. District Court Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV, a Bush appointee, held that ICE could not go into churches because the First Amendment guarantees religious freedom.
Judge Saylor also ruled that ICE could not be within 100 feet of a church absent exigent circumstances, which is the same rule that applies to real law enforcement personnel. Consider the case of the ICE agent waving his gun at a pastor in her church parking lot where ICE had parked their unwelcome vehicles when she told them to move.
Lent asks us what our responsibilities as Christians are, what the boundaries of our care for others should be. How many of us would like to have ICE agents brandishing their guns in our church? It was during this time that, as the Gospels tell us. Jesus turned his face toward Jerusalem. Will we do the same?
Prayer for the Day
We search for your voice, O God, and hear only the winter wind
But we know beneath the snow the earth stirs with sounds of life;
We look up into the sky, O God, but see only gray clouds
And we wait for the sun to break forth giving us hope and life.
Transform us from a people afraid of our own shadows
Into your people of courage and strength.
In the name of the One who gives us a vision of hope,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
Repentance is always difficult. And not only because we must cross the threshold of self-love, but also because our own sins are not so easily visible to us.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Russian writer (1918-2008)
The challenge of social justice is to evoke a sense of community that we need to make our nation a better place, just as we make it a safer place.
Marian Wright Edelman, founder Children’s Defense Fund, age 86
Shout out, do not hold back! Lift up your voice like a trumpet!
Announce to my people their rebellion, to the house of Jacob their sins.
Yet day after day they seek me, and delight to know my ways,
As if they were a nation that practiced righteousness
And did not forsake the ordinance of their God;
They ask of me righteous judgments, they delight to draw near to God.
“Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves but you do not notice?
Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers.
Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist.
Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice hear on high.
Isaiah 58: 1-4