I want to take a poll. So raise your hand if you ever visited a different country . . .
Raise your hand if you have ever stayed in a different country longer than two weeks . . .
Raise your hand if you have lived in a different country longer than two months . . .
Raise your hand if you have lived in a different country longer than two years . . .
Isn’t that something? Now we have to ask ourselves why anyone would want to go to a different country in the first place. Some go to see different sites, experience different things, or go to search something in particular (like the Magi did in the gospel). They were traveling because they felt compelled to follow a star.
Most of us go other places because we CHOOSE to, but others go because they are forced to . . . like Mary, Joseph and Jesus did in the gospel. They go to a different country because they are afraid to stay in their home country. We see this happening today as people are migrating all over the world to various places. The MN Catholic Bishops have designated Epiphany Sunday as Immigration Sunday. I have some information for you. And Molly, our Pastoral Associate, will share a poem amidst the information. [Molly’s parts are in italics]
How would you respond if you were a parent of a child who is seeking to come to the US?
What should our response be as Christians, with this issue? Some feel that we shouldn’t even talk about these things at Church, but who are we as followers of Jesus, if we don’t engage in what is happening in the world?
As many of you know, more than 7,000 Central American migrants have arrived at the US-Mexico border after crossing Mexico and parts of Central America, according to official figures released by the Mexican Interior Ministry. They are in temporary shelters in the border cities of Tijuana & Mexicali.
We carry tears in our eyes: good-bye father, good-bye mother
We carry soil in small bags: may home never fade in our hearts
The migrants say they are leaving their respective countries in the hope of building a better future for themselves and their families.
We carry names, stories, memories of our villages, fields, boats, homes,
We carry scars from proxy wars of greed and power
Others hope to get jobs abroad which pay enough for them to send money to their relatives who stayed behind. The 2nd largest amount of money going into Mexico is the money earned from relatives working in the United States.
We carry diplomas: medicine, engineer, nurse, education, math, poetry, even if they mean nothing to the other shore
Many say their dream is to reach the US. Some of them have relatives here already whom they hope to join, others have chosen this as their destination because they will find employment. But mostly they come to find a safer place to live and raise their families.
We carry our hands, feet, bones, hearts and best minds for a new life
Unaccompanied children arrive at our borders without their parent or legal guardian with them. In recent years, many of these children were from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Most are fleeing grave violence, gang recruitment and are seeking to reunify with family in the United States.
We carry dust of our families and neighbors incinerated in mushroom clouds and the fear and images of street warfare. We carry carnage of mining, droughts, floods, genocides, poverty and murder. We carry our islands sinking under the sea and fields left fallow
Jesus, himself, lived as a refugee because His own land was not safe. In His public ministry, Jesus Himself was an itinerant man, moving from place to place, “with nowhere to lay His Head.” (Mt 8:20)
We carry old homes along the spine, new dreams in our chests
In the Gospel of Matthew (25:35), Jesus tells his disciples, "I was hungry, and you gave me food, I was thirsty, and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me."
The Apostle Paul asserts the absolute equality of all people before God: “There is neither Jew nor Greek. . . for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal 3:28) In Christ, the human race is one before God, equal in dignity and rights.
We carry yesterday, today and tomorrow
We’re orphans of the wars forced upon us and the governments neglect of us
Pope Francis said, “We have become a society that has forgotten the experience of weeping, of ‘suffering with’” displaced persons seeking a better life for their families. He called on us to ask the Lord to “wipe out [whatever attitude] of King Herod remains in our hearts” and to ask for the grace to “weep over our indifference, to weep over the cruelty in the world, in ourselves, and even in those who anonymously make socio-economic decisions that open [the] way to tragedies” that erect barriers to authentic human development for our migrant brothers and sisters.
We’re refugees of the sea rising from industrial wastes and immigrants from the violence of the once trusted.
In their designation of Immigration Sunday, the MN Bishops have encouraged us to write to our elected leaders to reject any measures that are in opposition to the fundamental human dignity of immigrants—especially the undocumented; and we encourage the Minnesota congressional delegation in Washington, D.C. to work for just and compassionate reform of the nation’s immigration system.
It is a complicated issue and one that demands our awareness and education. This month here at Christ Our Light we have opportunities for that that you will be hearing about. We have also heard about the border wall and yet we still have thousands of immigrant adults and children living in cages on the border whose dignity is being compromised.
We carry our mother tongues 爱(ai)，حب (hubb), ליבע (libe), amor, love
平安 (ping’an), سلام ( salaam), shalom, paz, peace
希望 (xi’wang), أمل (’amal), hofenung, esperanza, hope, hope, hope
As we drift…in our rubber boats…from shore…to shore…to shore… - and walk in our dusty shoes from border to border to border
Finally, and most importantly. the Bishops ask that we join them in prayer a just, yet merciful solution to the plight of immigrants in our country. May all people find hope in the light of the star that guided so many . . . out of darkness to the light of Christ.
[Poem adapted from Things we Carry on the Sea by Wang Ping]