National Migration Week – Day 6

Note: The following exercise was adapted from the Catholic Charities – Social Concerns Parish Guidebook

On this sixth day of National Migration Week, spend some time reading quotes from Saint Benedict, Saint Mother Theresa and Saint Oscar Romero, who speak to us about welcome, encounter and accompany.

Welcome – The Rule of Saint Benedict

“All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ, for he himself will say: I was a stranger and you welcomed me (Matthew 25:35) … By a bow of the head or by a complete prostration of the body, Christ is to be adored because he is indeed welcomed in them … Great care and concern are to be shown in receiving poor people and pilgrims, because in them more particularly Christ is received.”

Encounter – Saint Mother Theresa, Where there is Love, there is God (page 26)

“Love is a one-way street. It always moves away from self in the direction of the other. Love is the ultimate gift of our selves to others. When we stop giving, we stop loving, when we stop loving, we stop growing, and unless we grow we will never attain personal fulfillment; we will never open out to receive the life of God. It is through love we encounter God.”

Accompany – Saint Oscar Romero (November 26, 1978)

“Each time we look upon the poor, on the farmworkers who harvest the coffee, the sugarcane, or the cotton, or the farmer who joins the caravan of workers looking to earn their savings for the year … remember, there is the face of Christ … The face of Christ among the sacks and baskets of the farmworker; the face of Christ is among those who are tortured and mistreated in prisons; the face of Christ is dying of hunger in the children who have nothing to eat; the face of Christ is in the poor who ask the church for their voice to be heard.”