IMAGE: CNS/Paul Haring
By Cindy Wooden
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Being afraid and concerned about the
impact of migration is not a sin, Pope Francis said, but it is a sin to let
those fears lead to a refusal to help people in need.
“The sin is to allow these fears to determine our
responses, to limit our choices, to compromise respect and generosity, to feed
hostility and rejection,” the pope said Jan. 14, celebrating Mass for the
World Day of Migrants and Refugees.
While fear is a natural human reaction, he said, “the
sin is to refuse to encounter the other, the different, the neighbor, when this
is in fact a privileged opportunity to encounter the Lord.”
Thousands of migrants and refugees now living in Rome, but
coming from more than 60 countries, joined Pope Francis and an international
group of cardinals, bishops and priests for the Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica.
Sixty of the migrants and refugees carried their homeland’s
national flags into the basilica before the Mass and hundreds wore the national
dress of their countries, including many of the people who read the prayers of
the faithful and brought up the gifts at the offertory during the multilingual
Mass.
While care for migrants and refugees has been a priority for
Pope Francis, the World Day for Migrants and Refugees has been an annual
celebration of the Catholic Church for more than 100 years. St. Pius X began the
observance in 1914.
After reciting the Angelus in St. Peter’s Square after the
Mass, Pope Francis announced that “for pastoral reasons” the date of
the annual celebration was being moved to the second Sunday of September. The
next World Day of Migrants and Refugees, he said, would be marked Sept. 8,
2019.
According to the United Nations, an estimated 258 million
people are living outside the country of their birth. The number includes 26
million refugees and asylum seekers, who were forced to flee their homelands
because of war or persecution.
In his homily at the Mass, Pope Francis reflected on Jesus’
response to the disciples who asked him where he lived. “Come and you will
see,” Jesus tells them, inviting them into a relationship where they would
welcome and get to know each other.
“His invitation ‘Come and see!’ is addressed today to
all of us, to local communities and to new arrivals,” the pope said.
“It is an invitation to overcome our fears so as to encounter the other,
to welcome, to know and to acknowledge him or her.”
For the migrants and refugees, he said, that includes
learning about and respecting the laws and customs of their host countries.
“It even includes understanding their fears and apprehensions for the
future,” he added.
For people in the host countries, he said, it means
welcoming newcomers, opening oneself “without prejudices to their rich
diversity,” understanding their hopes, fears and vulnerabilities and recognizing
their potential.
‘In the true encounter with the neighbor, are we capable of
recognizing Jesus Christ who is asking to be welcomed, protected, promoted and
integrated?” Pope Francis asked.
“It is not easy to enter into another culture, to put
oneself in the shoes of people so different from us, to understand their thoughts
and their experiences,” the pope said. That is one reason why “we
often refuse to encounter the other and raise barriers to defend ourselves.”
People in host countries may be afraid that newcomers “will
disturb the established order (or) will ‘steal’ something they have long labored
to build up,” he said. And the newcomers have their own fears “of
confrontation, judgment, discrimination, failure.”
Both set of fears, the pope said, “are legitimate,
based on doubts that are fully comprehensible from a human point of view.”
Sin, he said, enters the equation only when people refuse to
try to understand, to welcome and to see Jesus present in the other, especially
“the poor, the rejected, the refugee, the asylum seeker.”
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