From the Rector

My dear friends in Christ,

Living so near the border one hears stories. The stories are heartbreaking and eye opening and too real. The stories are from our neighbors, our friends, the folks we meet and greet at the newsstand or bus stop or while waiting for coffee. You hear them especially when wearing a collar because some stories can’t wait to be told — to be whispered or shouted to someone who might have some special line to Jesus. They want Jesus to hear. They want Mary to hear. You can hear a pleading as they tell the story as if they’ve looked all around them saying, “Is it nothing to you who pass by?”

The stories are inspiring.

I talked with a young woman who was beaten near to death by a boyfriend in Mexico. She fled. She fled him and the drugs and the police who tried to take her back to the abuser. She fled her parents who told her it was her fault. She fled fists and rage and self-loathing to make it here. She’s smart. She’s funny. She’s feisty. It takes courage to flee. She fled here so she could wear a dress again and no one would ask about the bruises. She fled here so she could sleep again and not be yanked out of bed and kicked in the stomach. She fled here because it’s the home of the free and the brave and she was brave enough to be free. She fled here. She went to college. She had two children with a new husband whose love is fierce and protective. Her children want to be a social worker and a nurse — because they want to help women like their mom. She’s undocumented. She’s threatened with deportation. She’s been brave. She’s paid taxes. She’s not taken a dime from our government.

Other stories are heartbreaking, too. 

A man was found dead in the desert. It took a while to learn his name. He was found covered in dust. He was out of water and out of time. He had been with a group making its way up to where there were jobs no Americans will take. They’ll pick fruit. They’ll sweat and blister and ache and get cut, bruised, and sometimes cheated for the little pay they are promised. This one man didn’t make it to pick fruit. A helicopter scared the group — the men dashed and darted and this one headed into the desert. He had a small bottle of water he had picked up at some dime store along the way. The water ran out. His legs ran out. He fell. Not for the first time. He didn’t get up again. He died with a rosary in one pocket and three pictures in another of his wife and his two children. He came to work because we won’t and he died for it covered in dust, parched, with only the things he loved in his pockets.

There are so many more stories.

If the encounter with God is an encounter with Truth and an encounter with Beauty, then we need to hear the stories. Not the manufactured manipulations of our fears but the life, death, love, and hope stories of people risking everything to come to live among a people who have nothing to fear. We need the truth of their lives and love. We need the beauty of their courage and hope and sacrifice. We need to head to the borders of our fears and cross them for the sake of Jesus whom we will find there.

I am proud that this year we will give our entire Christmas Eve offering to Cruzando Fronteras. You can read more about their work in an article later in this issue. Suffice it to say that we are offering this support not because migration is an issue we care about. We are offering it because these are stories we need to hear, people we need to love, and hope we need to offer. (See related article in the Diocese section of today’s Bell & Tower.)

I don’t know the policy solution to the migration issue but I do know that people Christ loves have come to our border and he is bidding us to follow him there to meet them, love them, and give of our hearts and treasure to help them find new hope. Let’s hear their stories and let them change us.

Yours in Christ,

Fr Robert