Christmas Reflection
We are accustomed to domesticating the Christmas story. We have our Mary dressed in blue, we have our Joseph brown and benign, we have shepherds carrying sheep, we have sweet sounds of carols. Perhaps it wasn’t like that at all.
Perhaps there was a pair wandering the roads, dusty and exhausted, the woman heavily pregnant, no shelter available and forced to give birth in a shed. Perhaps we should think of refugees rather than Hollywood extras when we imagine the scene. Christmas is about’ the good news to the poor’, about the One who has come as light into the darkness… Anne Thurston, Out of darkness, REALITY, Dec 2008
“We do not live alongside one another purely by chance; all of us are progressing along a common path as men and women, and thus as brothers and sisters.’ The road is the same, that of life, but the situations that we pass through on this route are different: many people have to face the difficult experience of migration in its various forms: internal or international, permanent or seasonal, economic or political, voluntary or forced. In various cases the departure from their country is motivated by different forms of persecution, so that escape becomes necessary. Moreover, the phenomenon of globalization itself … is not only a social and economic process, but also entails… crossing geographical and cultural boundaries. … All, therefore, belong to one family, migrants and the local populations that welcome them, and all have the same right to enjoy the goods of the earth …
Excerpt from MESSAGE OF POPE BENEDICT XVI FOR THE 97th WORLD DAY OF MIGRANTS & REFUGEES (16 January 2011)