The call to welcome the stranger
We can't escape the command from God to find Christ in the poor and vulnerable
I spoke these words on Matthew 25:31-46 one week ago at my parish, during a prayer service organized on the Day of Solidarity in Minnesota. The next morning, another U.S. citizen was killed by ICE. Our call to care and to work for justice is unmistakable. We will be judged by God on how we respond to the cries of the poor and the needs of the suffering.
When I was 22 years old, freshly graduated from college, I headed off to France to spend a volunteer year, helping people, saving the world. I was going to work in a group home for adults with disabilities, and in a homeless shelter with refugees from North Africa. It was an Important Thing. I was going to do Great Things.
Do you know the best thing I did that whole year? The most important thing—for me, anyway, the thing I always think about first when I look back on that year that changed my life?
I carried a dresser.
It was a freezing cold night, and I was 22. So of course I hadn’t thought to bring an umbrella to work. I was invincible, right? Wrong! I was wet! And cold! And rushing home because all I wanted to do was get warm and dry. But I came around a street corner and all of a sudden, I saw a man trying to carry a dresser by himself, down the cobblestone street, in the rain.
In a split second, I knew I had to help him. So I ran over—and suddenly I saw that I knew this man. His family had been staying in the homeless shelter where I worked. His wife and kids were in the women’s shelter, and he had been staying in the men’s shelter. I knew how hard it had been for them to be separated for so long, and I had heard that they had just gotten their own apartment, but I hadn’t realized they had moved in.
And here he was, trying to move this dresser in the rain, all alone.
Now look: I am five-foot-nothing, a hundred-and-nothing. I am not the superhero to the rescue when it comes to physical strength. But I ran up to him and in my mangled French I said, “Can I help you?” “No, no,” he insisted. I saw his pride. I saw him wanted to provide for his family. They had lived through hell in their home country, and they had come to France seeking asylum, seeking safety and shelter, seeking a home and a better life.
And now they had it. In the pouring rain, he grinned at me and pointed up to the tiny window and said, “We got an apartment here!” “Here” was a run-down building on a dingy street in not-the-best part of town. But he was bursting with pride. “I got this dresser on sale, a great price,” he said, both of us trying to communicate in a language that was not our own. “But yes, it is a little hard to get it up the stairs by myself.”
“Please let me help!” I insisted. After a few rounds of back and forth, he finally let me grab one end of the dresser, and he picked up the other, and we carried it up three flights of stairs. His apartment was tiny, and mostly bare, and packed with family members, but it was warm and dry. And he was beaming with pride—and gratitude.
Helping him carry that dresser was the best thing I did all year.
Do you know why? Because I set down what I was doing, to be interrupted, to take up someone else’s needs. Because I realized that all my lofty ideals about what mattered and how to help people most and how to use my gifts—all those big questions I’d thought about in college—all of that paled in comparison to simply showing up when someone else needed a hand.
To meet a small need. On a rainy day.
Right now in Minnesota, the people around us need a lot more than a hand with a dresser. They need us to speak out against their suffering. They need us to care for their basic needs: food, drink, shelter, safety. They need us to do everything we can to stop what is happening in our cities and communities.
Cruelty, violence and terror are never the ways of God. Yes, a country has the right to set and enforce just laws—and the Catechism of the Catholic Church and more than a century of Catholic social teaching from our popes supports exactly this. But the same Catholic social teaching spells out clearly that people have a right to migrate to seek safety for themselves and their families, that laws must be just and enforced fairly, that the dignity of every human person must always be respected. And that above all, violence, injustice, cruelty, and evil are never the way of God.
I want to share with you powerful words from Bishop Neary of the Diocese of St. Cloud, that he spoke yesterday to his people:
Dear Brothers and Sisters in our Latino communities of the Diocese: I think of you often and pray for you every day. It breaks my heart to know that you and your families are living under such a dark cloud of fear because of the presence of ICE agents in and around your towns and neighborhoods. I can only imagine the feelings of loneliness and isolation you are experiencing.
You are understandably afraid to leave your homes, afraid to drive your children to school, and many of you can no longer go to work because of the risk of arrest. Even to attend Sunday Mass puts you at risk because ICE agents have sometimes been seen outside your churches. I also know that it is a struggle for you to buy food for your families and you worry about how to pay your monthly bills of rent and utilities.
I want you to know, first of all, that we all love you, and we pray for you, and we are in solidarity with you. You are not alone. You are our brothers and sisters in the Lord. We are one family in Christ. St. Paul said in his first letter to the Corinthians: “If one member suffers, all the members suffer with it.”
Right now, as the bishop says, in our schools and streets, our neighborhoods and workplaces and parishes, the Body of Christ is crying out. People are hungry and need to be fed. People are thirsty and need drink. People are naked, sick, in prison—and they need clothing, care, and companionship. They need those of us who are not at risk right now to speak up and show up.
This is not a “left or right” issue. This is not a “Republican or Democrat” problem. This is the Body of Christ crying out—to be heard, to be helped, to be seen, to be saved. If we are the members who are suffering, we have to be able to trust that the other members will hear us and reach out to help us. And if we are the ones who hear the cry of the poor? We better answer.
Quite literally, and so starkly you can’t miss it, Jesus says our own salvation depends on it. If we reject those who are suffering right now? We reject God.
Our salvation does not depend on party loyalty. It depends on our love of neighbor. Plain and simple.
When I was a kid and I’d hear this Gospel reading, about Jesus separating the sheep from the goats, those who helped him-in-others and those who completely missed the boat, it used to make me very anxious.
I’d get fixated on the activities and the actions. I’d check off on my fingers as I was sitting in the pews: “Ok, when was someone hungry and I fed them, or thirsty and I gave them to drink? When did I last welcome a stranger? Or visit a prisoner?!”
Do you know what I missed? What it’s easy to miss, and what you might miss, too?
Listen to the words again, if I read them a different way.
“For I was hungry, and YOU gave ME food. I was thirsty and YOU gave ME drink.” You/me. This is an encounter between us and God. The actions matter, sure. But what matters most is that in every one of these moments, we are meeting God.
Whenever we meet a sister and brother in need, and we make the choice to help them, we are serving Christ among us. He could not be clearer about this. I’d argue it might be his clearest lesson in all of the Gospels.
Right now what is happening to immigrants in our communities here in Minnesota is wrong. Our pope has spoken up and called it wrong. Our U.S. bishops have spoken up and called it wrong. Our own pastor spoke up last weekend and apologized for not speaking up sooner, for not praying about it together at the last Sunday’s Mass. Do you know how stunning that was? Do you know the last time I heard a priest apologize, for anything, let alone in public? With humility and love for his people who are suffering?
Never. I’d never heard that before.
And most of us have never experienced anything like what we are living through right now. I don’t need to retraumatize you with the stories. You have seen them with your own eyes and heard them with your own ears. We have neighbors who are suffering and terrified. We have relatives and friends—and fellow parishioners, and surely some of you who are praying with us tonight from the livestream—who are not leaving their homes right now. Because the color of their skin, regardless of their legal status, regardless even if they are U.S. citizens, means they do not feel safe right now, in their community. In their homes.
What do we do? How can we help? Most importantly, what is God calling us to do in this moment, and how is God calling us to help?
We have the blueprint. It’s right in the Gospel. And we know the things to do: we’re doing them right now.
We’re feeding the hungry. We’re raising money for food shelves and churches who are delivering groceries to those who can’t leave their homes. We’re going to the store and shopping for our neighbors who don’t feel safe.
We’re giving drink to the thirsty. We’re donating bottled water and baby formula. I was at the march downtown earlier today, -10 below zero, and I can’t tell you how many people were handing out free coffee or Somali tea on the street corners. Minnesotans know how to take care of one another. (Have you ever tried to leave a Minnesotan party? You are going home with no less than a heaping paper plate of leftovers and “bars,” and honestly, if you tell someone you love whatever coffee they served, they’ll send you home with a to-go cup full of it. I have carried this exact drink out the door!)
What else is God calling us to do? Jesus keeps going in the Gospel.
I was a stranger and you welcomed me. This one tops the list right now. We are rallying for our immigrant neighbors. We are saying yes, this state is a place for refugees and asylum seekers. My father-in-law and his whole family immigrated to Minnesota when he was eight, and do you know how many times in the past month I’ve thought, “If they hadn’t been able to immigrate here, I wouldn’t be here today. My husband would never have been born. My children would not exist.”
Besides our Native and indigenous friends and relatives, all of us have come to America from elsewhere. Someone welcomed our ancestors when they were strangers, because as the reading from Leviticus reminds us, “You shall love the foreigner as yourself, for you, too, were once foreigners in the land of Egypt.” Welcoming the stranger was an essential part of the culture and laws of the Israelites, in the Old Testament and in Jesus’ time. Because in the harsh climate of the land in which they lived, if you did not welcome the stranger, they would quite literally die. (Another truth that hits close to home for Minnesotans in the chilling, killing cold, right?)
So Jesus is calling us, indeed God is commanding us, to welcome the stranger.
And clothe the naked.
And care for the sick.
And visit those in prison.
This week, I’ve seen on the news and social media and with my own two eyes in Minneapolis, how people are doing all three of these.
Clothe the naked? Minnesotans are organizing clothing drives and making sure everyone has warm coats for the harsh weather.
Care for the sick? They are picking up prescriptions for immigrant neighbors who can’t leave their home, or they’re driving them to doctor’s appointments. A doctor asked me to help her find medical transport for her pediatric patients, since her nurses are anxious and worried about how many families are canceling appointments or surgeries for sick children right now. Canceling surgeries for sick kids.
Visit those in prison? Did you know there are volunteer teams who wait outside the Whipple Building in downtown Minneapolis, to help those who have just been released from detainment and are often sent out into the cold without coats, without a cell phone, without any way to get home?
Minnesotans right now are doing exactly what Jesus asked. We who are gathered here are trying to do what Jesus asked. We are praying and acting and giving and helping, in any small and big way we can.
But do not forget. The deepest meaning of what Jesus is telling us comes from the you/me. I was hungry and YOU gave ME food. I was thirsty and YOU gave ME drink. We are not just helping our neighbors in crisis. We are meeting Christ himself. He could not have spoken these words any more plainly.
Is there more to do? Oh yes. So much more. We need to keep helping our neighbors. But we also need to call our leaders to act with justice, fairness, and compassion. We also need to support organizations who are working to change what is happening in Minnesota—and across the country. And most of all, we need to remember that when we meet our God face-to-face, when each of us are called upon to make a reckoning for our life, we will not be asked, “how did you vote?” or “which politician did you really dislike?” or “who did you argue with in the comments on social media?”
No. Jesus will ask us, when YOU saw ME naked, did YOU clothe ME? when YOU knew I was ill or in prison, did YOU visit ME?
Meeting our neighbors—meeting Christ himself—face to face, in the flesh and blood, in an hour of greatest need and suffering, with love and compassion and committed care—that matters more than anything else. For all of us.
Laura, thank you, so much, for sharing this with us, and for all you are doing during these terrible days. Peace be with you.🕊️
"Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Christ has no body now but yours."
-St. Teresa of Avila