6th day

‘‘Go, leave your country…’’ 

Leaving to answer God’s call, requires a stripping way, a passage from death to life, an experience of the Pascal Mystery. This is what we experience when we leave our native country to answer an obedience. Somewhere deep down, we understand what it means to ‘‘be a foreigner’’. This is the experience lived by migrants. 

Pope Leo XIV evokes this experience of migration to remain attentive to welcoming the stranger: ‘‘The experience of migration accompanies the history of the People of God. Abraham left without knowing where he was going. Moses led the people on a pilgrimage through the desert. Mary and Joseph fled to Egypt with the Child. Christ Himself who came to his own home, and his own people did not welcome Him, He lived among us as a stranger. This is why the Church has always recognized in migrants a living presence of the Lord who, on the day of judgement, will say to those who are at his right hand: ‘‘I was a stranger and you welcomed me’’[1].

Pope Francis said: ‘‘Every human being is a child of God. The image of Christ is imprinted in them. The Church, like a mother walks with those who walk. Where the world sees threats, she sees children, where walls are built, she builds bridges. She knows that her love for the Gospel is credible only when   it is translated into gestures of closeness and welcome, and that in every rejected migrant, Christ Himself knocks at the door of the community.

Prayer to be said together

Lord, may your spirit of strength and love help us to step outside ourselves to welcome the other, different, stranger, migrant, refugee, the one who comes from elsewhere or from far away, so that we may walk together like the beloved children of the same Father.

[1] ‘‘I have loved you’’, Dilexi te, Apostolic Exhortation on love to the poorest, Pope Leo XIV, 2025, n°73.