14th Sunday in Ordinary Time—A

“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened” (Mt 11:28). Maybe because it’s the Fourth of July weekend, I cannot help but hear within Jesus’s words still another invitation to the weary and worn:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

We certainly cannot equate Jesus’s call to discipleship with Emma Lazarus’s 1883 poem, “The New Colossus,” emblazoned on the base of the Statue of Liberty. But might the Spirit reveal an insight into the demands of discipleship if we place these two passages in dialogue with one another?

However, showing hospitality isn’t just meant to get you 5-star ratings or more catechumens. The final parable of Matthew’s Gospel will find us at the Father’s house where Jesus says to those on his right, “Come …For I was a stranger, and you welcomed me” (Mt 25:34–35). To welcome guests, especially the poor and the stranger, is to welcome Christ (Rule of Benedict, chapter 53).