From the Pastor

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
 
     For nearly half a century, the Catholic Church in the United States has observed National Migration Week as an opportunity to reflect on the circumstances confronting migrants—including immigrants, refugees, children and victims and survivors of human trafficking.
 
     National Migration Week culminates this Sunday with the Vatican’s celebration of World Day of Migrants and Refugees. This year’s theme is “Towards an ever wider ‘WE’”. In his letter announcing this year’s theme, Pope Francis emphasizes that this focus calls on us to ensure that “after all this, we will think no longer in terms of ‘them’ and ‘those,’ but only ‘us’” (Fratelli tutti, no. 35).
 
     Of course, Migration Week is all the more compelling for us this year because of the tragic events unfolding in Afghanistan. The Catholic Church in the U.S. is readying a welcome for thousands of refugee families who sacrificed so much to aid American efforts over the last 20 years. That welcome is being led for the Church in Georgia by Catholic Charities Atlanta (CCA). CCA (formerly Catholic Social Services) has a long and distinguished history of assisting those fleeing conflict and danger around the world. The agency helped welcome Cuban refugees in the 1960s and the first wave of Vietnamese refugees in the mid-1970s. One of my previous parishes collaborated with CCA in the 1990s to welcome a family fleeing the Rwandan genocide.
 
     Because the people of Immaculate Heart of Mary have supported the refugee families who needed us in the past, I am confident of your Christ-like concern for these newest refugees from Afghanistan who need us now. So I have assured Catholic Charities Atlanta that they can come to us with any need—up to and including sponsoring a family ourselves for their first months in the United States.
 
     As we wait to learn what may be asked of us, let us all join Pope Francis in his prayer for World Day of Migrants and Refugees:
 

Holy, beloved Father, your Son Jesus taught us that there is great rejoicing in heaven whenever someone lost is found, whenever someone excluded, rejected or discarded is gathered into our “we”, which thus becomes ever wider.
 
We ask you to grant the followers of Jesus, and all people of good will, the grace to do your will on earth. Bless each act of welcome and outreach that draws those in exile into the “we” of community and of the Church, so that our earth may truly become what you yourself created it to be: the common home of all our brothers and sisters. Amen.

 
Your brother in Christ’s word and work,