Recent events in our country directed toward individuals nationality background or religious preference have brought to the table of many dining rooms, lunch rooms etc. discussions about who or what a person was or is or can become. Most people we meet in this country today, we assume, are Americans. We recognize, however, different skin tones, eye shapes or accents and immediately suspect that man or that woman is not an American.
For whatever reason someone asked me, not too long ago, if I was a convert from Judaism to Catholicism. Of course I was perplexed because most people ask what part of Ireland does my family claim as the place of roots. Quickly in the conversation, I learned the question was driven by my first and last name: Milton and Jordan.
Yes, some of my friends are named Milton and except for the few who are not "black skinned," the others do tend to be of Jewish extraction. Then I recalled for the inquisitor that there was an English poet of the 17th century: John Milton. Furthermore, I know that my family name springs from a Norman family who predecessors had battled in the Crusades. Like many Crusaders, they came back to England carrying water from the River Jordan that was used to baptize the next child. Many of those children were baptized with the name of Jordan. So, does the circuitous beginning of my family (3/4 from England and 1/4 from Germany disqualify my American citizenship? Should I start carrying citizenship papers?
Likewise, had I been a convert from Judaism, would have to tell the US Government that I am not an American, even though I was born in Washington, DC? I have traced the Jordan who came from Normandy in its English days by way of property ownership in Northern Ireland granted because of participation in the Norman Invasion back to 1634 or there abouts here in the southern country of Henrico, Virginia. And, as I recall my history of this country, those who became American on July 4, 1789 were imports, interlopers, from other nations.
After listening to a research scholar who was speaking to the issue of Muslims in our country and was asking if there was Muslin blood in his body, he replied that it was but that since he was born in this country he never considered himself anything but an American. He was somewhat surprised when he was asked the question. It was a fact he never seriously considered as a problem. The response led me to wonder how teen-aged children of Muslim families feel today as their hear so many condemnations and disparaging remarks about their heritage. Every single American has the responsibility to accept those who had come to our 50 states or who spring from the people who arrived with the pilgrims or afterward. How painful the insinuations or direct put downs must be for younger people striving to be noble people in this country.
Can we not see the hypocrisy when religious beliefs are so challenged in a society which so often refuses individuals the right to express religious beliefs in our own school and governments? What is tolerance? Where is understanding?
So what does it mean to be an American when my relatives lived in the deeper parts of Virginia before the Declaration of Independence and a Constitution? What does a mean when a person living in the USA says his family comes from Nazi German family? from a Japanese family whose relative flew a Kamikaze plan against the US Navy at Pearl Harbor? from a North Korean family whose relative was involved in the Korean War against the USA? from a North Vietnamese family whose brother engaged in killing American troops?
These questions do require serious reflection, patience and genuine listening to the Holy Spirit in prayer at this time in our history. Sit yourself along the shoreline pictured above and let your heart and mind open up as you consider these words from today's
first reading: "I come to gather nations of every language: they shall come and see my glory." And ponder the gospel reading as well.
