And also the Jubilee of Missions and of Migrants. What did you hear at Mass today, if you went?
Our guest homilist was a priest who directs a border ministry in Brownsville, Texas. He told us about what it was like for their clients, waiting for months on the Mexican side of the border for the asylum interview appointments that they had pre-scheduled with the U.S. government, when on January 20 of this year all their appointment were permanently cancelled. We opened up a discussion after Mass the next day, and asked people to tell us how they felt. Devastated. Deceived. Terrified. And one woman said to me: “Father, the last to die is hope.”
He pointed us to Pope Leo’s message for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees. The whole thing is valuable reading:
Migrants and refugees remind the Church of her pilgrim dimension, perpetually journeying towards her final homeland, sustained by a hope that is a theological virtue. Each time the Church gives in to the temptation of “sedentarization” and ceases to be a civitas peregrine, God’s people journeying towards the heavenly homeland (cf. Augustine, De Civitate Dei, Books XIV-XVI), she ceases to be “in the world” and becomes “of the world” (cf. Jn 15:19)….
…In a special way, Catholic migrants and refugees can become missionaries of hope in the countries that welcome them…Their presence, then, should be recognized and appreciated as a true divine blessing, an opportunity to open oneself to the grace of God, who gives new energy and hope to his Church: “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it” (Heb 13:2).
Pope Leo also celebrated Mass today in St. Peter’s Square (here’s an article about that Mass), and he preached the homily on a similar theme, anchored by the first reading from Habakkuk 1-–2 and the Gospel from Luke 17.
Brothers and sisters, those boats which hope to catch sight of a safe port, and those eyes filled with anguish and hope seeking to reach the shore, cannot and must not find the coldness of indifference or the stigma of discrimination!
Pope Leo XIV, Homily, 5 October 2025
…We are… to open our arms and hearts to them, welcoming them as brothers and sisters, and being for them a presence of consolation and hope.
I was particularly interested in Leo’s interpretation of the sometimes troubling phrase “unworthy” or “unprofitable servants”:
[S]alvation…slowly grows when we become “unworthy servants”, namely when we place ourselves at the service of the Gospel and of our brothers and sisters, not seeking our own interests but only bringing God’s love to the world.
I guess that means that placing ourselves at that service is only doing “what we were obliged to do.”
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