Every kind of stranger (reflection, Feast of the Holy Family, Year A)

 

December 29, 2025: Feast of the Holy Family (Year A)

 

The Gospel reading at Mass today is about the flight into Egypt. There’s a controversy about how to understand it.

 

Pope Pius XII, in 1952, declared that the Holy Family, in this flight into Egypt, became the model and patron all migrants and refugees, everywhere, regardless of why they are on the road. Oddly, some of the people who agree that the US should deport millions of people fuss about linking the flight to Egypt to refugee status in general. In fact, a new argument has surfaced: the Holy Family visited Egypt but then went home when there was no longer any danger; so they are not the model and patron for refugees, but rather the model for the civic-minded and obedient visitors. They had the good sense and proper deference to the law to self-deport.

 

May I back off a bit, and recall that Jesus said that we should welcome immigrants and be made welcome in heaven, or alternatively we can refuse to welcome immigrants and find ourselves unwelcome in heaven, self-deported to hell. Says Matthew 25:31-46.

 

To understand that, it’s worthwhile looking through the Old Testament to understand the roots of that tough teaching. Who are these people we should make welcome?

 

Here are a few: There’s Adam, THE Man; he was an exile. There’s Abraham, THE Patriarch; he was a stranger and sojourner; he was also the model of hospitality. There’s Moses, THE Lawgiver; he was a leader of an exiled people. There’s Elijah, THE Prophet; he was a sojourner from Tishbe, but also a refugee from an angry and murderous queen. There’s David, THE King; he was a refugee twice, from Saul and later from Absalom; also, David wrote with passion and beauty about the plight of all of Adam’s children, who are all strangers before God. There’s the most complicated stranger, Isaiah’s Suffering Servant, a scapegoat explained in Leviticus, who is from the heart of the community, but accepts alienation in order to take away the sins of the people. There’s Jonah, the most famous scapegoat, but also a missionary who accepted his role as a stranger in land that needed a preacher. So the Old Testament is loaded, chockful, beginning to end, with prominent and heroic strangers – which explains the Lord’s command to welcome strangers.

 

Note also: these OT strangers all prefigure the Lord. Exile: Adam led us into exile, and Moses led the people out of Egypt, but Jesus led his people out of exile definitively. Stranger: Jesus came to us as a stranger, like Abraham: “he came to his, but his own knew him not.” Hospitality: The Lord’s Last Supper is illuminated by Abraham’s First Feast, when the God and man sat down at table together. Refugees: David and Elijah were refugees; so was Jesus; for them, their refugee experience did not turn into exile. Scapegoat: Jesus was the Lamb of God, a scapegoat who took away the sins of the people and went out into the desert. Missionary: Jesus was a missionary, wandering through new towns and villages to find people who did not set out to find him.

 

I add another insight in the New Testament that I don’t find prefigured in the OT: Jesus was a striking guest. The most famous wedding in world history was in Cana, and we don’t know the names of the bride and groom! We remember the wedding because Jesus was a guest there. Repeat that slowly: we remember the wedding because we remember a guest. That is, the greatest events in our lives can be transformed by our guests.

 

I add a note about the end of the Flight from Egypt reading. When the family returned to Israel from Egypt, there was still trouble: “When he [Joseph] heard that Archelaus was ruling over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go back there. And because he had been warned in a dream, he departed for the region of Galilee. He went and dwelt in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled: He shall be called a Nazorean.”

 

So Jesus and his family were exiles after they returned from their time as refugees.

 

Squawk, squawk: “He was a self-deporter, not a refugee.” Please stop the nonsense. He was every kind of stranger, every kind, one by one through the whole list.

 

Jesus and Mary and Joseph were refugees. If you reject refugees, you reject the Lord.

Welcome strangers, guests, exiles, refugees, scapegoats, missionaries, weirdos – the whole collection. Truly, for sure: this is the way to meet the Lord.