Mass in Recognition of All Immigrants 2022

Most Reverend José H. Gomez
Archbishop of Los Angeles

Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels
September 18, 2022

My brothers and sisters in Christ,¹

It is great to see all of you for our Mass today as we come to celebrate our Mass in Recongition of All Immigrants.

So, we come to this altar to thank God for his blessings on our families and our communities. We come also bearing our burdens, our sorrows and dreams. And we lay everything down before Jesus on this altar today.

Our country has always been a beautiful collection of many immigrant peoples. This nation has been a beacon of hope, a refuge for peoples who have no place left to turn. America is a nation of nationalities,
a nation of migrants and refugees.

In our second reading today, St. Paul tells us to pray for our civic leaders. He tells to offer “supplications, prayers, petitions, and thanksgivings … for all in authority, that we may lead a quiet and tranquil life in all devotion and dignity.”

I think, my dear brothers and sisters, this is a beautiful prayer for us, especially today. We need to pray harder for our government officials and lawmakers. Let’s pray today in a special way that we can create a society that better serves the poor and the least among us, a society of solidarity and compassion.

Because we know that times are hard, that things aren’t easy for many of our family members, our loved ones and friends. It has been decades now — literally decades — and our nation has still not resolved the problems and injustices of our immigration system.

So let us, especially today, intensify our prayers for those in authority.

But at the same time, we should never lose hope. Our Father holds us in the palm of his hand, he loves us with an undying love, and he has a special love, as we know, for the poor and the vulnerable.

Of course, the question for each one of us today, as always, is how do we respond to the love of God?

In today’s passage of the Gospel, Jesus tells us that we have to choose between “God and mammon,” between the priorities of God, and the priorities of the world.

The world tells us to be selfish.
The world tells us to set our heart on worldly riches and security.

That is the world that the prophet Amos strongly condemns in today’s first reading. It is a world obsessed with profit and power — even if,
as the prophet Amos says, that means “trample upon the needy and destroy the poor of the land”.

But that’s not the way of Jesus. The way of Jesus is the way of love.
The way of Jesus, is not about “getting.” It’s about giving. It’s not about ourselves. It’s about others.

The love that Jesus shows us, is a love that is self-giving,
self-sacrificing. It means using our resources and talents, not to
enrich ourselves, but to enrich the lives of others.

In the passage of the Gospel today Jesus tells us: “The one who is faithful in little things is faithful also in big things.”

This is the message for us. And the saints teach us that we grow in holiness and virtue — little by little, day by day. Little things matter in a big way.

So we need to be faithful to our spiritual life to have a personal relationship with Jesus and really become missionary disciples.

So much of our spiritual life is about being faithful to little things — those little devotions and practices. Spending time in prayer, asking the Lord for guidance, for help. Even when we are tired, when we don’t feel like it.

We also need to be faithful in the little things of charity, of love. It means responding with generosity to the people that we deal with — maybe just paying attention or giving them some time. It’s a little thing but makes a huge difference.

So today, let us especially rededicate our lives to living as Jesus calls us to live, according to his words and his priorities. Then, my dear brothers and sisters, we can really make a huge difference in our society and we can help so many people to discover the presence of God in their lives.

So today, as we celebrate the World Day of Migrants and Refuges and also today we start the National Migration Week, we need to continue “Building the Future with Migrants and Refugees’, as the message of Pope Francis for today’s celebration reminds us. 

In his message Pope Francis says that “If we want to cooperate with our heavenly Father in building the future, let us do so together with our brothers and sisters who are migrants and refugees. Let us build the future today!”

So, my brothers and sisters, once again we are called to help our neighbors and leaders to feel compassion for the common humanity and destiny that we share with one another, including our immigrant brothers and sisters.

Let us keep praying for our nation and let us hard for immigration reform and let us remember to keep our lives always centered on Jesus.  

And let us ask Our Lady Guadalupe, to continue to intercede for us. May she keep us always in the tender mantle of her care, and may she help us to always stay faithful in the little things of love.