I Was a Stranger and You Welcomed Me

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Soon it will be time to read the story of Mary and Joseph searching for shelter.  Each of us will be called to look into our own hearts and find room for the Christ.  How will she or he come this year?  Will it be a stranger?  Or, will it be a familiar face to whom we do not want to open our door?

The Sisters of the Upper Mississippi River Valley invite us this Advent to consider welcoming the Immigrant.  These Sister risk-takers, including the Sinsinawa Dominicans, want to ask us for a space in our hearts and our prayers and our lives for someone newly arrived to our country.  Instead of the government’s stance on designing “secure communities,” these women want to be “welcoming communities.”  They want to welcome the one who another would deport or cast away as unimportant.

So, for whom are you making room in these last weeks of Advent?

Peggy Ryan, OP
Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin

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