How can the baptized claim to welcome Christ if they close the door to the foreigner who comes knocking? “If anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?” (1 Jn 3:17).
Timely words, from a saint of our own time, Pope John Paul II.
This is part of his message for Word Migration Day in 1999, at the dawn of another Jubilee Year:
In many regions of the world today people live in tragic situations of instability and uncertainty. It does not come as a surprise that in such contexts the poor and the destitute make plans to escape, to seek a new land that can offer them bread, dignity and peace. This is the migration of the desperate: men and women, often young, who have no alternative than to leave their own country to venture into the unknown. Every day thousands of people take even critical risks in their attempts to escape from a life with no future. Unfortunately, the reality they find in host nations is frequently a source of further disappointment.
At the same time, States with a relative abundance tend to tighten their borders under pressure from a public opinion disturbed by the. inconveniences that accompany the phenomenon of immigration. Society finds itself having to deal with the “clandestine”, men and women in illegal situations, without any rights in a country that refuses to welcome them, victims of organized crime or of unscrupulous entrepreneurs.
On the threshold of the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000, as the Church acquires a renewed awareness of her mission at the service of the human family, this situation also raises some serious questions. The globalization process can be an opportunity, if cultural differences are accepted as an opportunity for meeting and dialogue, and if the unequal distribution of the world’s resources leads to a new awareness of the necessary solidarity which must unite the human family. If, on the contrary, inequalities increase, poorer populations are forced into the exile of desperation, while the wealthy countries find they are prisoners of an insatiable craving to concentrate the available resources in their own hands.
Aware of the dramas but also of the opportunities inherent in the migration phenomenon and “contemplating the mystery of the Incarnation of the Son of God, the Church prepares to cross the threshold of the third millennium” (Incarnationis mysterium, n. 1). In the Incarnation the Church recognizes God’s initiative in making “known to us in all wisdom and insight the mystery of his will, according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (Eph 1:9-10). Christian commitment draws strength from Christ’s love, which is Good News for all human beings.
In the light of this Revelation, the Church, Mother and Teacher, works so that every person’s dignity is respected, the immigrant is welcomed as a brother or sister, and all humanity forms a united family which knows how to appreciate with discernment the different cultures which comprise it. In Jesus, God came seeking human hospitality. This is why he makes the willingness to welcome others in love a characteristic virtue of believers. He chose to be born into a family that found no lodging in Bethlehem (cf. Lk 2:7) and experienced exile in Egypt (cf. Mt 2:14). Jesus, who “had nowhere to lay his head” (Mt 8:20), asked those he met for hospitality. To Zacchaeus he said: “I must stay at your house today” (Lk 19:5). He even compared himself to a foreigner in need of shelter: “I was a stranger and you welcomed me” (Mt 25:35). In sending his disciples out on mission, Jesus makes the hospitality they will enjoy an act that concerns him personally: “He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives him who sent me” (Mt 10:40).
In this Jubilee year and in the context of a human mobility that has expanded everywhere, his invitation to hospitality becomes timely and urgent. How can the baptized claim to welcome Christ if they close the door to the foreigner who comes knocking? “If anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?” (1 Jn 3:17).
The Son of God became man to reach out to all, giving preference to the least ones, the outcast, the stranger. When he began his mission in Nazareth, he presented himself as the Messiah who proclaims the Good News to the poor, brings release to captives and restores sight to the blind. He came to proclaim a “year ofthe Lord’s favour” (cf. Lk 4:18), which is liberation and the beginning of a new era of brotherhood and solidarity.