People should help others, without losing sight of the fact that their entrance into the kingdom of heaven depends on how they treat the needy people before them, Washington Auxiliary Bishop Evelio Menjivar said at a Sept. 24 Mass at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle that commemorated the 109th World Day of Migrants and Refugees.
“We must always be a community ready to welcome, protect, promote and integrate; not a society that reacts, exploits, denigrates and dehumanizes others,” he said in his homily at the Mass.
Bishop Menjivar affirmed that the response to the challenges posed by contemporary immigration can be summarized in those four verbs – to welcome, protect, promote and integrate – that ennoble a society. By putting those words into action, people will contribute to the advancement of the kingdom of God and promote the integral human development of all, he said.
He said that these verbs do not apply only to immigrants and refugees, but describe the mission of the Church: to welcome those who live on the peripheries of society and need to be welcomed, protected, promoted and integrated.
The bishop said some countries with an abundance of resources and a need for labor, moved by public opinion pressure that in many cases is based on prejudice and misinformation, generally tend to tighten their borders and ports of entry and create hostile and intolerant attitudes toward welcoming immigrants and refugees.
“Then, society finds itself in the need to deal with the situation of clandestine people, that is, undocumented men and women without any rights in a country that refuses to welcome them. They are victims of organized crime or unscrupulous businessmen,” he said.
Bishop Menjivar stressed his concern for “young people wasting the best years of their lives waiting for opportunities to use their talents,” a social phenomenon that occurs on a large scale in Latin America where there are not many job opportunities.
“The greatness of a nation consists of the available resources – whether human or natural – being well utilized for the benefit of all,” Bishop Menjivar stressed. Many “push-out” nations, he explained, are very rich in resources, tend to have a very young population, a lot of land, natural resources and a vast potential for growth.
The bishop said governments only need to create the conditions that motivate and unleash the creativity of citizens and investors.
“Broken lives and shattered dreams... sadly begin in the country of origin of immigrants and refugees,” he said, referring to countries where the population sees hope for the future annihilated. “They had no choice but to leave everything behind in search of better opportunities.”
Bishop Menjivar experienced that firsthand. He was born in 1970 in a humble rural area in El Salvador, and his parents were farmers. Fleeing the armed conflict in his country, he embarked on the odyssey of crossing the U.S. border as a young man.
“It’s hard to leave family behind... I had to leave because of a lack of economic opportunities. One realizes that dreams cannot come true in your country. So, one throws oneself into the unknown with fear and with the simple motivation of a dream,” he said in an interview earlier this year with El Pregonero, the Spanish-language newspaper and website of The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington.
In his homily at the Mass for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees, Bishop Menjivar said, “Those of us who were forced to make the decision to leave behind our country, our family, our friends and what was familiar to us to venture into the unknown and the unpredictable, we know that it is not an easy or light decision, but sometimes there is no other option.”
The bishop said that people don’t understand what motivates others to risk so much to emigrate.
“In the end it is God himself who calls us just as he called Abraham from his country of origin to a promised land,” he said.
Bishop Menjivar said Jesus’s words offer a reminder that all people are guests and pilgrims on this Earth, and people’s attitudes toward the strangers among them should correspond with the awareness of being pilgrims and strangers in the world themselves. The bishop added that Jesus goes even further, urging people to welcome the stranger.
In the United States, there are more than 11 million undocumented people, whom the bishop described as “our brothers and sisters condemned to live in the shadows because of an immigration system that does not work and the lack of will to fix it.”
Migration is not a new phenomenon, although it could be said that it has become more acute.
According to the United Nations Refugee Agency established in 1951 to assist, protect and monitor refugees, there are 108.4 million forcibly displaced persons worldwide due to persecution, conflict, violence, human rights violations or events that have seriously affected public order. Data from 2022 data showed that 62.5 million are internally displaced, 35.3 million are refugees, 5.4 million are asylum seekers and 5.2 million are people in need of international protection.
Bishop Menjivar said today’s immigrants and refugees, like so many before them, arrive seeking “a place where their families are safe, their children can receive an education, and their ingenuity and hard work are rewarded.”
Currently, the cap on the number of refugees who can be admitted to the United States is 125,000 per year, but the government is considering increasing the number.
The bishop noted that not everyone who seeks asylum gets an immediate entry visa, food, shelter, work and freedom, or realizes their dream so quickly in this country, and many “have been forced to live in fear of exploitation, deportation and separation from their families.”
Then Bishop Menjivar asked if that is the best that a great nation can do, and he called for a spirit of generosity toward migrants and refugees. “We must show the utmost respect for the dignity of every person, both in the country of origin and in the host country. We must build bridges, not walls, and we must create opportunities to be productive,” he said.
The Catholic Church has celebrated the World Day of Migrants and Refugees since 1914 as an occasion to express concern for the different categories of vulnerable people on the move, to pray for them as they face numerous challenges, and to raise awareness among Catholics about the opportunities that migration offers.
Each year, the World Day of Migrants and Refugees is celebrated on the last Sunday of September. The theme chosen by the Holy Father for this year 2023 is: “Free to choose whether to migrate or to stay.”
(Andrea Acosta wrote this article for El Pregonero, the Spanish-language newspaper of The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, and translated it into English for the Catholic Standard.)
Related article:
Pope’s message in Marseille: Welcoming the stranger is a global mandate
Here is a link to Pope Francis’s message for the 109th World Day of Migrants and Refugees in 2023.
