The
Face of
Mercy / Daniel Conway
Building the future with migrants and refugees
(En Espanol)
“Here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come” (Heb 13:14).
On Sept. 25, the Church celebrated World Day of Migrants and Refugees. For this important occasion, Pope Francis issued a statement reflecting on the theme for the current year, “Building the future with migrants and refugees.”
This future, the pope says, must be “a future in which every person may find his or her place and be respected; in which migrants, refugees, displaced persons and the victims of human trafficking may live in peace and with dignity. So that the Kingdom of God is realized with them, without exclusion.”
This year—as in every year—the Holy Father wants to call our attention to the plight of men, women and children who have been forced by many different circumstances to leave their homes and seek a new homeland (whether temporary or permanent) where their families can be safe, and where they can grow on a social, economic, cultural and spiritual level.
As he always does, Pope Francis urges us to see these families as members of God’s family and as our own sisters and brothers. He challenges us to look beyond the statistics to the faces of real people who only want what every family wants—a better life for themselves and for their children.
“Migrants must be welcomed, accompanied, supported and integrated,” the Holy Father insists. To turn our backs on members of God’s family is to reject Jesus, our brother and theirs. To refuse to walk with them or support them, or help them integrate into our society, is to commit the grave sin of indifference. This is the sin that our Lord warned us against in his parable of the Good Samaritan. In this famous story, it is the foreigner who welcomes, supports and shares generously with the wounded man who has been ignored by his own kind and left to die.
Pope Francis reminds us that we are all migrants, all on a journey to our heavenly homeland. “The ultimate meaning of our ‘journey’ in this world,” the pope says, “is the search for our true homeland, the kingdom of God inaugurated by Jesus Christ, which will find its full realization when he comes in glory.” God’s kingdom has not yet been brought to fulfillment, but it is available to us in the measure that we help one another to seek and find what we are all searching for.
The Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ challenges us to be people who seek justice and charity for all, and who are determined to work together with all our sisters and brothers to build a future full of hope. In his message for World Day of Migrants and Refugees, Pope Francis says:
In our daily efforts to do the Lord’s will, justice needs to be built up with patience, sacrifice, and determination, so that all those who hunger and thirst for it may be satisfied (Mt 5:6). The righteousness of the kingdom must be understood as the fulfillment of God’s harmonious plan, whereby in Christ, who died and rose from the dead, all creation returns to its original goodness, and humanity becomes once more “very good” (Gen 1:1-31). But for this wondrous harmony to reign, we must accept Christ’s salvation, his Gospel of love, so that the many forms of inequality and discrimination in the present world may be eliminated.
No one must be excluded. God’s plan is essentially inclusive and gives priority to those living on the existential peripheries. Among them are many migrants and refugees, displaced persons and victims of trafficking. The kingdom of God is to be built with them, for without them it would not be the kingdom that God wants. The inclusion of those most vulnerable is the necessary condition for full citizenship in God’s kingdom.
These are powerful words: “The inclusion of those most vulnerable is the necessary condition for full citizenship in God’s kingdom.” But isn’t this precisely what Jesus meant when he said: “Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me” (Mt 25:40)? How can we become full citizens of God’s kingdom if we reject, ignore or abuse God’s only Son in the person of his migrant or refugee brothers and sisters?
Pope Francis concludes his reflections with a beautiful prayer inspired by his patron, St. Francis of Assisi: “Lord, let us learn how beautiful it is to live together as brothers and sisters. Amen.”
(Daniel Conway is a member of The Criterion’s editorial committee.) †