Archbishop José Gomez told parentless migrant children waiting to be settled in the U.S. to trust in God’s plan for their lives, during a Mass held at a federal emergency shelter in Long Beach Sunday morning.
The liturgy was one of several celebrated since Los Angeles priests were given permission a month ago to celebrate the sacrament on weekends for children at the temporary shelter in Long Beach and another at the Pomona Fairplex. Both are among the several set up by the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services (HHS) to handle the surge in unaccompanied minors fleeing violence and poverty in Central America.
Officials have described the shelters as temporary pit stops for kids awaiting custody of sponsors or family members in the U.S. Since the first children arrived at the shelter in late April, nearly 600 have been released and some 150 remain, HHS reported May 28.
“We are very important to God. We always must keep that in mind, and even though we sometimes have difficult situations, we must trust God’s plan for our lives,” said Archbishop Gomez in his homily during the Mass, celebrated in Spanish inside one of the Long Beach Convention Center’s exhibit halls May 30….
During the liturgy, rosaries were placed in front of the makeshift altar and blessed. Afterwards, Archbishop Gomez personally handed out the rosaries to the children.
In his homily, Archbishop Gomez explained to the children that the day’s readings for the feast of the Holy Trinity “tell us how God wants to be with us….”
The archbishop encouraged the children to “go to [God] all the time,” and recommended praying the rosary given to each of them, citing his personal experience with the Marian devotion.
“I always bring the Rosary with me. And I pray it every day,” said the archbishop. “And it has always helped me a lot.”
The above comes from a May 30 story in Angelus News.
The archbishop says everyone is important to God, but the way things sift out in the world it looks like some are more favored than others.
Anonymous, it is our job as Christians, to bring Christ’s Love to these poor, suffering children. That is how they will learn of God’s Love for them.
Blessed are the poor.
What’s your net worth? Easy to say when you are comfy. Do you think those kids feel blessed? Do you think they feel cared for by God? How about read them the Footprints poem and tell them God is carrying them right now?
These kids were indeed abandoned by their parents but let’s not treat them as victims. Your drippy concern doesn’t help. Get over it.
Anonymous– where is your religious Faith?
Anonymous at June 1, 2021 at 8:20
Religious take vows of poverty because it is the surest, safest way to holiness. In doing so, they imitate our Lord. The Bishop gave them the thing of most value in the world-aside from Holy Mass and the Eucharist and God Himself.
The rosary is the most powerful prayer aside from Mass. There is nothing of more worth that he could have given them. I am glad to hear that he prays it every day.
the Lord’s Eye is on the sparrow and I know He watches over these children.
Rosaries will not do it….these kids need homes or to go back to their home where they came from. Is it right locking up a bunch
of illegal children? Something is wrong with this picture.
I wish the Church would organize something for these children and stand up against bad conditions. If you turn some of my parishes church ladies loose, those kids would have crocheted blankets, cookies. Gatorade, toys…they would spoil them just like they do the kids at Christmastime.
We can improve their conditions. We could do care packages just like we do for soldiers.
We can do more.
But by giving them rosaries and telling them to cheer up he can feel like he’s done something. The rosaries will end up in the trash, sad to say, and the kids are already off his mind.
I hope not. Praying the rosary will help them and every person in the world.
This is very good. A great comfort for the poor, orphaned children, and a hope in the love of Christ and Our Lady given to them, to hold onto. And a blessed Rosary for each orphaned child! Wonderful! Very, very important! Yes, God has a Plan for each and every life, and He loves each and every child. These poor children need all our love and prayers, and hopefully, they will be resettled soon, and will be able to be blessed with close to a normal, happy, healthy childhood! They will probably have painful scars lifelong, because of all that they have been through. God bless them all! It is very, very painful and hard, to be an abandoned orphan, as a poor little foreign child, abandoned by their own people, and unwanted, tragically, by many who are evilly prejudiced, in a strange new land. It is so hard to try to cope with a foreign land and culture, with a strange language, that the poor child cannot understand! May God bless and comfort them all.