OFFICE FOR SOCIAL MINISTRY
“It is not just about migrants … it is about not excluding anyone.” (Pope Francis, World Day of Migrants and Refugees)
In celebration of the Vatican’s 2019 World Day of Migrants and Refugees, Sept. 29, Pope Francis called us to “encounter God at the margins.” In response, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops organized at the end of September a week-long pastoral visit, “Encuentro Con Migrantes,” along the U.S.-Mexico border, which we joined.
In the opening Mass, El Paso Bishop Mark Seitz spoke about encountering God in the suffering of his border community while burying a newly-married couple, who died protecting their newborn child in the Walmart massacre that targeted the “migrant invasion.” Then Bishop Oscar Cantú of San Jose spoke about touching the wounds of Christ while he buried another mass shooting victim — an autistic little girl — in the migrant worker community of Gilroy, California.
This experience of encountering a wounded Christ was accentuated when the Encuentro (Encounter) participants visited a migrant center in Juarez, Mexico, already overwhelmed with refugees fleeing violence from Central America and Mexico. The U.S. and Mexican bishops blessed migrant families as we watched many of them fearfully grasping their only possessions (water bottles, stuffed toys) before boarding buses for the long grueling trip back to the southern Mexico-Guatemala border.
Farmworkers kneel in prayer during an outdoor Mass Sept. 26 in Hatch, N.M., part of a pastoral encounter by U.S. bishops with migrants at the border. (CNS photo/Tyler Orsburn)
With tears in his eyes, Bishop Seitz asked the refugees pardon for the current U.S. migration policy. Just weeks before, this same bishop held the hand of a 9-year old girl as he protested that policy by accompanying her across the border bridge with her parents and seriously ill 2-year old sister who were fleeing violence in Honduras.
Later we visited a Juarez parish in Anapra, a very poor border neighborhood, known for welcoming refugees and organizing Mexico migrant farm workers. Here four young women from El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Guatemala explained why they had fled the violence in their countries where they had witnessed the murders of relatives and experienced sexual assaults. These four women now live together caring for their four children in a house provided by the severely impoverished, yet incredibly generous, Anapra parish.
The next day, Encuentro participants talked story with El Paso migrant farm workers who described what it’s like to work long days, picking vegetables on the border for 70 cents a bucket (thus having to fill 100 buckets a day to make $70). Encuentro participants then celebrated Eucharist while buckets of freshly picked vegetables lay in the background beneath a statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe, Our Lady of the Americas.
The Encuentro then traveled to the New Mexico border agricultural area where migrants pick the world-famous Hatch red and green chiles. After a long day’s hard work, families gathered at sunset in the field for a ceremonial “Matachines” indigenous dance and a beautiful Eucharist blessing the land, water, harvest and workers. This was followed by the poor rural parish hosting a delicious meal with multiple uses of chiles and folk dances.
One memorable moment of this evening of the Encuentro was the very moving testimony of a youth minister and one of her teen leaders from Deming, New Mexico’s poorest county. With tears of sorrow and joy, they described how they encountered God through their ministry hosting hundreds of migrants seeking refuge in the U.S., but who had been arrested and were awaiting deportation back to Mexico. The youth minister described how, despite some fears of a “migrant invasion” in their small town, they discovered what it meant to live their faith with a wounded Christ, and in the process, experience God in a very deep way.
The teen leader softly sobbed as he talked about a little migrant boy who had thanked him for being the first person in the United States to show him the kindness and compassion of the God who embraced them both as brothers.
These are just some of the images the Conference of Catholic Bishops’ border Encuentro was blessed to experience with the wounded Christ who reminds us, “what you do to the least of these, you do to me.”
Please visit www.migrants-refugees.org for more on encountering God on the margins.
Mahalo,
your friends at the Office for Social Ministry
