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Migration’s biblical roots and the quest for immigration reform

The life-sized figures in the sculpture "Angels Unaware" include the Blessed Mother holding the baby Jesus and standing with St. Joseph among a crowd of migrants and refugees from across the world and from different eras. The sculpture by artist Timothy Schmalz was displayed in September 2020 at The Catholic University of America and is a replica of the original one Pope Francis unveiled in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican during the 2019 World Day of Migrants and Refugees. (CNS photo/Tyler Orsburn)

According to a recent article from the Center for American Progress, 70% of Americans believe that we need immigration reform. At present there’s reason for cautious hope in comprehensive immigration reform, but it can only be achieved through bipartisan agreement.

This reform will both benefit the 11 million undocumented people living in our country, and establish a system for prospective immigrants. With it, we will send a message to the international community. But what can help guide it?

As we have heard in the past, immigration is often an act of love, as parents seek a better life for their families. It is, we might add, also an act of faith and of hope. 

Faith, hope, and love: these virtues put us squarely in the stream of salvation history that shapes our Christian thought and action. And the Bible offers building blocks for a loving and just response – to our citizens, to those who crossed our borders years ago, and to those seeking a new home in the future. 

 

Venezuelan migrant Luisiana Cordoba organizes her belongings as she takes a break in Gachancipa, Colombia, June 28, 2020. Cordoba had been on the road for a week and was trying to make her way to Venezuela with her three children, after losing her job in Ecuador. (CNS photo/Manuel Rueda)

What do we understand by “salvation history” in the Bible? As Christians we don’t simply read Sacred Scripture. Instead, Scripture interprets and guides our lives, inviting us to grow and change as we follow God’s will. Every experience finds a home in the human encounter with the divine that becomes salvation history.   

We learn from the Book of Genesis that the human race’s first experience of migration was not easy. In the beginning, God created everything good. The human person, the image and likeness of God, is free for the sake of love. But we can misuse our freedom. We can sin. And we did. As punishment for sin, God drives Adam and Eve out of Eden, although he never takes back his love for them.  

 As Sacred Scripture progresses, we learn there’s more to immigration than expulsion; it’s also a proof of God’s love and compassion for human beings. 

In Genesis 12:1, God tells Abraham: “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.” Whereas Adam and Eve were driven out of their home, Abraham is called out. This call foreshadows all Abraham’s subsequent experience. Repeatedly the Lord asks him to act on trust; repeatedly Abraham responds. He enters Egypt and re-enters Canaan. He moves around Canaan. Even the Lord’s call to go to Mount Moriah and sacrifice Isaac is a sort of migration into trust, which is always shown in a deep desire to fulfill God’s will.  

Although for Abraham the experience of migration is individual, in the Book of Exodus the Lord expands it to include the entire people of Israel in their journey from slavery to freedom. 

Moses, God’s chosen instrument, is himself a refugee from Egypt when God appears to him in the burning bush and says “Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people out of Egypt.” Moses complies, and over the next 40 years the people of Israel experience the ambiguity and uncertainty of migration. They encounter strife and danger en route. They long to reach their destination, yet know their difficulties won’t end there.

But not all biblical migration is so dramatic. Unlike Abraham, Ruth doesn’t hear a clear call from God to leave her native Moab for the land of Judah. Unlike Israel in Egypt, there’s no indication that she’s oppressed in her homeland. Ruth’s desire to accompany her mother-in-law motivates her emigration. Once in Judah, Ruth obeys civic legislation, gleaning the ears of grain according to Levitical law. Eventually she marries Boaz, becoming the great-grandmother of King David, and thus the Messiah’s ancestor. Her migration brings blessings to her adopted country.  

Throughout the Old Testament, God wants to give his people – individually and collectively – a homeland; but he also seems to want them to be journeying.  And this motif finds its fulfillment in Christ, who had nowhere to lay his head (Matthew 8:20).

From the womb Jesus knows migration. His parents go from Nazareth to Bethlehem for the census – which means he’s born far from home.  

Then the Bible presents us with the Holy Family’s flight into Egypt, a journey with a hazy outcome. This childhood ordeal must have etched itself in Christ’s heart, and given him both a vivid sense of trust in the Father’s will and gratitude for those who received his family in their plight.

Finally, as an adult Jesus is always on the move. As soon as he preaches and heals in one town, he moves on to the next following the Father’s will. We see him on the road carrying the cross to Calvary. And after the resurrection Jesus sends his disciples from Jerusalem back to Galilee and meets them there.  

Men stand in line near a burned migrant center waiting for food in Bihac, Bosnia-Herzegovina on Jan. 11, 2021.  (CNS photo/Marko Djurica, Reuters)

This rapid sketch of migration’s biblical roots shows that for some people migration – and welcoming migrants - is part of God’s plan; we also observe that migration according to just laws can be a blessing, both for migrants and for their adopted country.

What conclusions can we draw from that?  

“Politics,” Otto Von Bismark observed, “is the art of the possible.” In other words, politics has a limited and practical aim: maintaining - and, when necessary, creating - just laws and structures which help the human person to flourish. The Catholic Church respects this competence.

Enforcing and changing laws, however, is not enough; hearts must change in order to have true justice and peace. Through his Church, Christ calls each of us to conversion of heart. And as we try to read the signs of the times with the help of the Holy Spirit, the Church will continue to offer principles of respect for the dignity of the human person from conception to natural death.

Salvation history continues. We will never find the perfect immigration policy; but, reflecting on the biblical experience of migration, we must do what we can, here and now, to welcome immigrants in love and truth. 

(Washington Auxiliary Bishop Mario E. Dorsonville serves as the chairman of Committee on Migration for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.)

A little girl on the Mexican side of the border fence peers into Sunland Park, New Mexico, on the U.S. side in this April 2019 photo. (CNS photo/Rich Kalonick, courtesy Catholic Extension)


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