Gospel Reflection
This Sunday is World Day of Migrants and Refugees. It is a highly relevant day for us to mark in the life of the Church.
The unrest and war in our world is driving entire families and communities to seek refuge in other countries, countries that are essentially nothing like these people have known or experienced before. To arrive in these places, refugees are putting themselves in the kind of risk that barely any of us can even comprehend. In some cases, people are willing to risk dying for the opportunity, or dying for those they love. Often, people are saying goodbye to their loved ones and not knowing if they will ever see them again. They are consciously willing to do this, if only their loved ones reach a better place. It is simply unimaginable for those of us lucky enough to be born in a peaceful country like Australia.
The way that all of this is portrayed so regularly in our news – next to so much other heartache and, of course, the sports results – puts us at risk of turning off from the pain and the real struggles of these people. Our culture, which so often seems to teach partisan values, gently whispers to us that these people are not our concern. I have recently even heard a politician blaming refugees and migrants for the housing crisis – making them a scapegoat. This is a dreadful and deeply unchristian whisper. Christ’s love does not act better in certain countries or within certain racial groups. There simply are no such boundaries for the love of God. Instead, we need to remember that these people are our sisters and brothers.
Christ told the disciples: ‘If anyone gives you a cup of water to drink just because you belong to Christ, then I tell you solemnly, he will most certainly not lose his reward.’ He taught them to work and act in his name. So, in terms of this Sunday’s reading, where in our lives do we act in his name? Or, rather more pertinently, where do we not act in his name? Where do we choose to look the other way, to abandon our discipleship because we prefer to say ‘they are not our problem’?
Even if we are not working for aid agencies or directly involved in the plight of the refugees, Christ asks us to not be an obstacle in the fate of these unfortunate people. When we say there is no room in our country, when we begin showing racist intolerance, then we are complicit in the world view. We are breaking down the Kingdom that we have been asked to build!
The Holy Family were themselves refugees. They were in flight, Jesus Mary and Joseph. They fled to Egypt to escape massacre of the Holy innocents which Herod the Great, king of Judea, orders the execution of all male children who are two years old and under in the vicinity of Bethlehem. So our question is what will be do when faced with the plight of refugees and migrants? Are we going to find a place for them in our world, our world where we are not at risk of being bombed or crucified on a street corner, our world where we do not subjugate women and other marginalised groups simply for being who they are? Or are we going to look the other way? For, as Jesus said, if you do this to the least of my brothers and sisters, you do it to me.
As the title for his annual message, the Holy Father has chosen “God walks with His people”. In it he has said:
“God not only walks with his people, but also within them, in the sense that he identifies himself with men and women on their journey through history, particularly with the least, the poor and the marginalized. In this we see an extension of the mystery of the Incarnation.
For this reason, the encounter with the migrant, as with every brother and sister in need, is also an encounter with Christ. He himself said so. It is he who knocks on our door, hungry, thirsty, an outsider, naked, sick and imprisoned, asking to be met and assisted”.
This Sunday dedicated to migrants and refugees, let us unite in prayer for all those who have had to leave their land in search of dignified living conditions. May we journey together with them. May we respect their human dignity and may we reach out to them in love. For whatever we do for the least of our brothers and sisters, we do for Christ.
Pope Francis’ Prayer for the 110th World Day of Migrants & Refugees 2024
God Almighty Father,
we are your pilgrim Church journeying towards the Kingdom of heaven.
We live in our homeland, but as if we were foreigners.
Every foreign place is our home, yet every native land is foreign to us.
Though we live on earth, our true citizenship is in heaven.
Do not let us become possessive of the portion of the world you have given us as a temporary home.
Help us to keep walking, together with our migrant brothers and sisters,
toward the eternal dwelling you have prepared for us.
Open our eyes and our hearts so that every encounter with those in need
becomes an encounter with Jesus, your Son and our Lord.
Amen.
