Caritas Sunday – Who is my neighbour?
Sunday 31st January 2021Today, 31st January, is Caritas Sunday in our diocese. This year has been one like no other
The parable of the Good Samaritan is a familiar one: a traveller is beaten by robbers, stripped and left for dead by the road. First a holy man and then another comes by, but both avoid the man. Finally, a Samaritan happens upon and helps the injured man, showing great compassion, reflecting the lengths to which love will go. He treats the injured man not as an enemy but as a neighbour, as one of his own. Through this parable, Jesus indicates that a person truly acts as a neighbour through love.
“But who is my neighbour?”
Every gift Caritas receives means we can love and support the most vulnerable and marginalised in our communities. We provide a befriending service for older people, preventing loneliness and isolation. We welcome the stranger, teaching English to those seeking asylum and those with refugee status so they can quickly integrate into their new home community. And we continue to love and feed the hungry, and shelter the homeless, across Greater Manchester and Lancashire.
Pope Francis reminds us that, before we are anything else, we are brothers and sisters sharing a common home, and we are called to become neighbours and friends. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen rising inequalities in wealth and new forms of poverty and a disregard for human worth. We have a universal responsibility to act; to accept the obligations we bear to each other, and to find ‘fraternal love’.
A willingness to respond to human need wherever it is found.
Please choose to help Caritas to continue its life-changing work during 2021 with our brothers and sisters in need.
The best way to answer the question ‘Who is my neighbour?’ is to choose to become a neighbour, itself a chosen journey along a road. To accept the invitation to approach the other with love, and cooperate with a wider process of grace.
Donate to Caritas this Caritas Sunday by clicking here
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