The Blog Alive for the New Year

A Blessed and Happy New Year to All! We continue our celebration of the Lord’s Nativity on this ninth day of Christmas. Tomorrow we celebrate the great Solemnity of the Epiphany, and we commence our celebration of National Migration Week 2010 in both the Cathedral Parish and the School. The focus of this year’s week is Migrant and Refugee Children.

In his message for this year’s focus on migrants and refugees, Our Holy Father Pope Benedict penned the following:

This year's theme – “Minor migrants and refugees” – touches an aspect that Christians view with great attention, remembering the warning of Christ who at the Last Judgment will consider as directed to himself everything that has been done or denied “to one of the least of these” (cf. Mt 25:40, 45). And how can one fail to consider migrant and refugee minors as also being among the “least”? As a child, Jesus himself experienced migration for, as the Gospel recounts, in order to flee the threats of Herod, he had to seek refuge in Egypt together with Joseph and Mary (cf. Mt 2:14).

At the Choir School, we will be looking at four regions and/or nations with desperate refugee situations that are in the news today: the Hmong people living in Thailand, the Palestinians on the Gaza Strip, Sri Lanka, and the Darfur region of Sudan. Additionally, the students will respond to Bishop Wester’s request that we contact our legislators in the weeks ahead asking for definitive action on immigration reform in the coming legislative session.

Specifically addressing parishes and other Catholic institutions, Pope Benedict wrote the following:

I now turn in particular to parishes and to the many Catholic associations which, imbued with a spirit of faith and charity, take pains to meet the needs of these brothers and sisters of ours. While I express gratitude for all that is being done with great generosity, I would like to invite all Christians to become aware of the social and pastoral challenges posed by migrant and refugee minors. Jesus' words resound in our hearts: “I was a stranger and you welcomed me” (Mt 25:35), as, likewise, the central commandment he left us: to love God with all our heart, with all our soul and with all our mind, but together with love of neighbor (cf. Mt 22:37-39).

More to come in the days ahead.