People With No Names - The Undocumented #90

Today in mass our first reading was from Exodus 22:21.  It said, "You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt."  So I was thinking about the universality of being "the stranger" in any given situation or place.  And I remembered this painting/copy that I did to study Masaccio's, "Expulsion of Adam and Eve".  They are being driven out of the only homeland that they know.  And I thought of how often people will ONLY go to new places (physically or psychologically) if they are forced to.  Things have to be really bad, to choose to leave everything you know.  You are quite literally DRIVEN out of your home.  And in the midst of that tremendous physical and psychological dislocation...those of us who are not (at this moment) "the stranger" have a choice to make:  extend kindness or make a hard situation harder.