My dear parishioners, woven into the fabric of our American history is the remarkable legacy of migration. Without this legacy and its compelling stories, we and our nation would vanish without memory. All our family stories about ancestors share something in common: good, courageous people setting out on long journeys, facing daunting obstacles -- even great danger -- in the hope of eventually reaping hard-earned rewards. Whether we realize it or not, each of our families adds an important chapter to the immigrant history of America. All too often we forget the hardships suffered by our own Catholic forefathers and the religious bigotry they endured. Stories of contemporary immigrants are no less compelling than the stories of our own forebearers or the founding families of our great nation. Unfortunately, our personal American family histories are largely forgotten these days, and priceless family relics and archives are often discarded. Whole boxes of family photographs and relics from previous generations sell at auction to strangers. When the auction house gavel is struck, another family history disappears. Our young people scarcely know their grandparents’ middle or maiden names. Many never will. On this subject, our Catholic catechetical and scriptural tradition clearly upholds the rights of the sojourner, the downtrodden and the day laborer. If any person should dare, having received every good thing from God, to force Our Lord to prefer him over another man and his poverty, God will choose the poor man: “’The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,’ says our Lord Jesus Christ, ‘because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.’” [Lk 4:18] The fact is that elected and appointed leaders of Mexico and the Central American nations persistently fail to respond meaningfully to the needs of their impoverished citizens. This failure aggravates the crisis of illegal immigration to the United States, most especially when nations to our south repeatedly wave through tens of thousands of their citizens to storm our southern borders. This is shocking to behold and frightening for everyone concerned. The repeated chaos engulfing our border shows our American immigration laws and procedures to be woefully inadequate, unevenly enforced, and reviled on all sides. All persons of good will should loudly demand the total reform of our immigration regime. Moreover, our immigration laws should be enforced firmly and equitably beyond the heat of special interests and partisan politics. As citizens of the United States, we know that reasonable, effective and just policies are needed for the sake of our country's well-being. And for the well-being of immigrants, that they not be hated and despised. Widespread immigration occurs somewhere in the world in every century. People make the breathtaking decision to depart their cherished homelands to cross forbidding mountain ranges, face cruel seas and endure barren deserts. They take on incalculable risks to cross borders which they cannot see. They set their faces toward the unknown in the hope of a better future for themselves and their families. Whatever may lie before us, we cannot banish God from the conversation. Is it just possible that God’s hand is on the shoulders of immigrants to accomplish a divine purpose for our Church and our nation? Is it just possible God is testing our charity and resolve along the way? If God's word and Christian tradition mean anything, then the answer must be, yes. "‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth,’ says the Lord, ‘so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.’” [Isa 55:8-9] May the citizens of our nation hear the will of God and act on it. By treating immigrants in our midst as human beings, we Christians recognize we too seek a better homeland, a heavenly one [cf. Heb 11:14]. And so, we follow Jesus in a holy way of life to the heavenly city Jerusalem where God has prepared a place for us: “One day we will all die in faith, none of us having received, in this life, the fullness of what God has promised, but having seen it and greeted it from afar, and having acknowledged that we too were strangers and exiles on the earth.” [Heb 11:13] Sincerely in the hearts of Jesus and Mary. Your pastor, Reverend Richard Barker +++
My dear parishioners, woven into the fabric of our American history is the remarkable legacy of migration. Without this legacy and its compelling stories, we and our nation would vanish without memory. All our family stories about ancestors share something in common: good, courageous people setting out on long journeys, facing daunting obstacles -- even great danger -- in the hope of eventually reaping hard-earned rewards. Whether we realize it or not, each of our families adds an important chapter to the immigrant history of America. All too often we forget the hardships suffered by our own Catholic forefathers and the religious bigotry they endured. Stories of contemporary immigrants are no less compelling than the stories of our own forebearers or the founding families of our great nation.