Memorial of the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary
We still have on our wall the cross-stitched gift a friend made for us as a wedding gift many years ago with the verse found in today’s reading, “For wherever you go, I will go, wherever you live I will live, your people shall be my people, and your God my God.” (Ruth 1:16b) It was (and maybe still is) a popular verse for wedding liturgies and gifts, and understandably so. But the context of the verse, as you might already know, is not a married couple or romantic relationship; it’s the loving bond between a daughter-in-law and mother-in-law.
Naomi is a widow whose sons married women from a different religion and culture. Naomi lived with her sons and their Moabite wives for about ten years when both of Naomi’s sons died. As was the custom, Naomi encouraged her daughters-in-law, Ruth and Orpah, now widows themselves, to return to their homelands. She blessed them and kissed them saying, “May the Lord guide each of you to find a husband and a home in which you will be at rest.” However, both women “wept aloud” and did not want to leave her.
Orpah finally did leave, but Ruth “clung” to Naomi, exclaiming, “Do not press me to go back and abandon you!” Followed by the familiar verse I quoted above (as cross-stitched for our wedding). Then Ruth continues with an even more dramatic line omitted from today’s reading, “Where you die I will die, and there be buried. May the Lord do thus to me, and more, if even death separates me from you!” (vs 17) And Naomi finally conceded as she saw Ruth’s determination to remain with her.
A significant aspect of the beauty of this story is the strong familial bond between these two women who are not biologically related and are from different “lands” and cultures.
As in the book of Leviticus (19:33-34) where the Lord said to Moses, “When the alien resides with you in your land, do not mistreat such a one. You shall treat the alien who resides with you no differently than the natives born among you; you shall love the alien as yourself; for you too were once aliens in the land of Egypt.”
Finally, in today’s gospel passage from Matthew, we are reminded of the greatest commandments, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind” and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Let us consider Ruth and Naomi this week as we ask ourselves, who is “the alien” and who is my neighbor?
—Eileen Miller