Chris Stigall: Father Jim Martin, Catholic Christians called to care for refugees. The Jesuit priest editor at large at America magazine, Father Jim Martin, you're gonna get a lot of the faith leader community reminding you that you know, Jesus was a migrant. Number 241.
Father Jim Martin: Yesterday on social media, I posted a few things about why Catholics and Christians are called to care for refugees and migrants. It's basically because Jesus asks us to in Matthew 25, he says to welcome the stranger is to welcome him and more pointedly, not to welcome the stranger is not to welcome him. But there's also another reason which is that Jesus himself was a refugee, and I might think I've never heard of that. But in the second chapter of Matthew after the Nativity, Joseph takes Mary and Jesus away from their home land to Egypt to flee the murderous designs of King Herrod. And the classic definition of a migrant, a refugee, excuse me, is someone who flees their homeland out of a well founded fear of persecution, which is exactly what's going on. Now sometimes people say, oh, well, it was the same country because it was all under the Roman Empire. But you know, give me a break. They are fleeing Judea and Galilee. I doubt that they thought that Egypt was their homeland.
And Father Dan Herrington in the Sacra Pagina series, reminds us that Egypt was not under Herrod's jurisdiction. By the way, over my shoulder is a painting done by a Ugandan refugee who I worked with. It's called "Our Lady of the Refugees," and that's Mary taking Jesus to Egypt.
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He was a refugee in East Africa where I was working, and it also gives rise to some other beautiful images like these from Kelly Latimore. This is La Sagrada Familia. It's the Holy Family as refugees as migrants along the border, and then migrants and refugees in the Middle East.
So, as we think about how we talk about refugees and migrants and how we treat them, it's not simply that Jesus asks us to welcome them and to treat them with dignity, but that Jesus himself was a refugee or a migrant. So just something to keep in mind. God bless you.
Chris Stigall: Yeah, so you're gonna get a steady diet of people like that and crying celebrities like Selena Gomez. Which book of the Bible describes Jesus trafficking fentanyl?
Producer: Maybe the book they were talking about in The Da Vinci Code? I don't know.
Chris Stigall: Did Joseph rape college girls.?
Producer: He did not.
Chris Stigall: Yeah, I feel, I mean, again, I'm not a theologian but I feel like Joseph, Mary and, and Jesus were all law-abiding citizens even though they fled. They also abided by the laws therein to the place they fled. I don't know that I remember Joseph and Mary and Jesus just doing whatever they please. The father's logic here is Jesus would have us befriending strangers. Yes. True. Now, by stranger, do you mean literally anyone no matter what they're doing? So said another way, you know, my son, this actually happened. True story. My son works in a bank, and recently a guy came in and opened an account. Turns out he robbed a target near the bank, and my son was actually instrumental, no kidding, this is kind of cool, in holding the guy. Keeping his attention there in the bank while the cops came and nabbed him.
He robbed a Target with a knife. Now, that guy was a stranger to my son. Should my son have told the guy who robbed the Target with the knife? "Hey, go hide in the back. I know the cops are coming, go hide in the back. You and I are strangers and Jesus tells me to befriend strangers. So go hide in the back there. I'll give you shelter till they clear."
Such a joke. Get out of here.
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