Keeping Our Humanity Alive

Last night I had the opportunity to listen to Sr. Norma Pimentel, MJ, the 2019 Fellin lecturer, as she told us stories about the Central American refugees she serves in the Rio Grande Valley. I was able to picture what it was like for her community to try to serve 2000 exhausted, hungry, unwashed people in a church hall without showers or beds. I imagined the pain experienced by a refugee whose hand was deformed after she used it to shield her daughter from a blow from a machete. I considered what it would be like to try to flee destitution in my homeland, only to face more shakedowns for money in exchange for even the possibility of being admitted to the United States.

At the end of Sr. Norma’s presentation, a student asked simply, “How can we help?” That is our response when we hear the stories of people who are suffering, whether firsthand or as relayed by someone else. That is why we must provide opportunities for people to encounter the stories of others who aren’t part of their day-to-day world. That is why we must remove the barriers of wealth and privilege that prevent us from seeing the poor and suffering among us, as the rich man in Jesus’ story failed to see Lazarus languishing outside the gates of his mansion.

How can we help?

• We can go to Catholic Charities and offer to help with resettlement of refugee families.

• We can strike up conversations with people of other cultures whom we encounter in the airport or in line at the grocery store.

• We can create art that helps us connect with the experience of the poor, such as the statue “Angels Unaware” by Timothy Schmaltz in St. Peter’s Square that depicts a group of migrants and refugees from different cultural and racial backgrounds and from diverse historic periods who are huddled together on a raft. Within this diverse crowd of people, angel wings emerge from the center, suggesting that the sacred is to be found in the stranger, in this case, in refugees and migrants.

•  We can read stories about people to gain an understanding of their life; as Thomas Page McBee has noted, “…readers [are]…used to searching for connections with strangers.... Reading is for the brave among us. It teaches us how to love people we don't know and will probably never meet.... We see that everyone is part of the human condition, even and especially us.”

Holocaust survivor Helen Fagin says, “…to surrender to a story is to keep our very humanity alive.” The inhumane treatment of Central Americans seeking asylum in the United States shows that our humanity is slipping away from us. We must wake up, remove the barriers of comfort, self-preoccupation, and indifference we have erected, and search for connections with strangers through their stories so we can welcome them as Christ. They will return the favor to us by helping us see the Christ light within ourselves.