Migration Convening Homily - July 2008

Our first readings this week are taken from Jeremiah – one of the major prophets of the OT.  It is from him the word, jeremiad comes into the English language which Webster defines as “a prolonged lamentation or complaint or angry harangue”.  (I promise that this morning my homily with not be such a jeremiad.) Also, to call someone a Jeremiah, again according to Webster, is to say that he or she is someone who is pessimistic about the present and foresees a calamitous future. 

So, perhaps, Jeremiah could be considered alongside with St. Thomas More a patron saint of lawyers.  But, all of us who are involved in working in one way or another with refugees and immigrants at this most difficult time can certainly identify with this prophet who lived in the 6th and 7th centuries before Christ.

Today– especially on the question of comprehensive immigration reform – many of our American people, including no small number of Catholics,  prefer to listen to Bill, Lou, Sean and Rush rather than to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  Given these circumstances, and given the fact that for many of the people we serve throughout our network any immigration reform that may come out of Congress next year or the year after will be too little, too late, the future does seem bleak.  However, we do well to reflect on God’s word to Jeremiah and to find in it comfort and encouragement for ourselves and for the people we serve.  In this morning’s reading, the Lord God says to the prophet:  “I will make you toward the people a solid wall of brass.  Though they fight against you, they shall not prevail for I am with you…”

To do the work you do, and to do it without discouragement, and without cynicism, you do need those “brass” – and let me say this very carefully – those “brass walls”.  But, more importantly, you need – we all need – the conviction, the assurance that in what we do the Lord is with us.  One only has to review the many times – throughout the Scriptures – in which God speaks and commands the protection of the alien in our midst to be convinced that what MRS and CLINIC, do, what our various legal services, our resettlement and orientation programs do is the Lord’s work.

Because it is God’s work, we must never lose sight of the reverence and awe that doing this work should inspire within us – for we are privileged to work among these people. Without such perspective we risk perhaps forgetting that what we do – after all – is the Lord’s work, not our own.

Pope Benedict wrote in Deus Caritas Est:  “In all humility we will do what we can, and in all humility we will entrust the rest to the Lord.  It is God who governs the world, not we.  We offer him our service only to the extent that we can, and for as long as he grants us the strength.  To do all we can with what strength we have, however, is the task which keeps the good servant of Jesus Christ always at work: ‘The love of Christ urges us on’ (2 Cor 5: 14).  #35 Deus Caritas Est.

The gospel reading today speaks of the “pearl of great price” – the pearl of course is the Kingdom of Heaven which is made present to us in the person of Jesus Christ.  In possessing him, we become heirs of the kingdom.  Our citizenship in the kingdom of God relativizes all other citizenships and allegiances which is why with St. Paul we can say that in Christ we are “strangers no longer”.

Of course, when faced with xenophobia, when faced with the prejudice that the fear of the unknown sometimes generates, when faced when a broken immigration system that because it is broken breaks people and their families, the Kingdom of God might seem a long way off,  a promise that will only be redeemed in the far distant future. 

Yet, the liturgy, especially the Eucharist, makes the future present today. And that future is not one of calamity but one of hope. As the ancient Fathers of the Church taught, the Eucharist is a foretaste, an anticipation of future glory. In Christ, we are made one; in Christ, barriers and walls are taken down; in Christ, the ancient and present foes of humankind – the devil, sin and death – are overcome. 

Faith is lived in charity, in love – for a faith without works is dead. And what you do is a labor of love and a living out of your faith. But hope gives it all context.  Hope tells us that faith has a future, that love has a destiny. 

It is that hope that is renewed in every Eucharist, when in our communion with the Lord, we experience the truth of what God tells Jeremiah, and what we must in our turn affirm today as we work – with humility – among the poor and the alien of our time,

“For I am with you, to deliver and rescue you, says the LORD. I will free you from the hand of the wicked, and rescue you from the grasp of the violent.

July 30, Wednesday 17th Week in Ordinary Time, Seeking Justice, Renewing Hope Convening. MRS-Clinic