November 10, 2024 Daily Devotion

Out of Honor and Respect

Show respect to everyone

1 Peter 2:17

Recently I had a meeting with an elderly Lakota woman who worked at a Catholic organization. We started the meeting in prayer and concluded with blessings ourselves with the sign of the cross. As we started our conversation, she shared that she was Oglala Lakota and was the youngest of six children and she was not raised Catholic. I then asked her “why did you make the sign of the cross after our prayer?”

She replied, “it is our traditional way to always show honor and respect for others and their religious beliefs.” This is one of the seven values of Lakota life. The other six values are fortitude, generosity, kinship, prayer, wisdom and compassion. There is always room for the pipe and the bible. The Lakota have a saying: Mitakuye Oyasin which translates to “all my relatives.” The biblical correlation is from Galatians 3:28: “We are all one in Christ, Jesus.” I was so moved by her kindness and respect, I prayed for her at mass the next day and called her to once again thank her for leading with love.