TWO YEARS ago, Bishop Anthony Fischer recounted the following story in the homily he delivered at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Parramatta, Australia, during the World Day of Migrants and Refugees of that year: “Around the time of World War I, a little girl was born in Alexandria in Egypt of Italian and Romanian parents. She was taken, as a war refugee, to China. She grew up in Shanghai and eventually met a Spanish Basque sportsman who was in Shanghai to play his sport. He spoke no English and she spoke no Spanish, so they courted in Italian and taught each other their languages after they married. They raised two daughters in war-torn Japanese-occupied China before fleeing again as refugees, this time from the Communists, in the late 1940s. They emigrated to the Philippines, where the younger girl pursued her secondary schooling in Manila. Then they came to Australia, where she married an Anglo-Celt, then the typical Aussie, before her parents moved to North America. That girl is my mother, and I am pleased she and my father are here at Mass today. So, you see, I am the product of refugees, in a nation of migrants, in what is very possibly the most multi-ethnic, multicultural diocese in the world.”
Of course, Bishop Fisher’s family history is rather complex. However, if we traced our fingers down our own family trees, I am sure that many of us would find that at least one of our ancestors was either a refugee or a migrant. And let’s not forget that the Holy Family too went through the travails of migration to Egypt in its flight from Herod’s cruelty.
It is therefore little wonder that the Church should dedicate so much care to the plight of our displaced brothers and sisters by commemorating the World Day of Migrants and Refugees every year.
The theme chosen by Pope Benedict XVI for the 99th World Day of Migrants and Refugees, January 13, is Migrations: Pilgrimage of Faith and Hope.
“Faith and hope,” the Holy Father underlines in his message, “are inseparable in the hearts of many migrants, who deeply desire a better life and not infrequently try to leave behind the ‘hopelessness’ of an unpromising future. During their journey many of them are sustained by the deep trust that God never abandons his children: this certainty makes the pain of their uprooting and separation more tolerable, and even gives them the hope of eventually returning to their country of origin.”
This experience of the indissoluble union between faith and hope is not restricted solely to migrants and refugees; it also applies to all of us as Christians. In fact, the closely-knit marriage of these two theological virtues must become a ‘guiding star’ along our pilgrimage toward the new promised land which alone will redeem all our spiritual and material losses.
Therefore Benedict XVI points to a great spiritual challenge we cannot shy away from: that of looking at this seemingly irreversible influx of migrants as an opportunity of rediscovering ourselves in others. The economic, human and existential crisis we are going through risks generating a paranoid form of individualism which may lead us to see every immigrant as a dangerous alien. It may tempt us to ignore or become indifferent to the plight of these uprooted people who had to leave their countries of origin because of conflicts, persecutions, natural disasters or abject poverty. This exasperated individualism may prevent us from acknowledging, as Pope Benedict went on to say “their professional skills, their social and cultural heritage and, not infrequently, their witness of faith, which can bring new energy and life to communities of ancient Christian tradition.”
Every individual who is compelled to migrate is first and foremost a human being, a human face, a human story, but these people are also important bricks with which to build a new civilisation of solidarity and love.
If we succeed in placing the Christ of “I was a stranger and you invited me into your home…” (Matthew 25,35) at the centre of our lives, we will bring renewal and a spirit of prophecy to our current Year of Faith.
Updated on October 06 2016