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Life on the Border
Young adults remember Holy Family on the U.S.-Mexico border
By J.D. Long-García, The Catholic Sun
January 4, 2007
In a town straddling the U.S.-Mexico border, a few hundred Catholics from both countries reenacted the Holy Family’s search for lodging before Christ’s birth in Bethlehem.
Mary and Joseph’s journey to find lodging reminds Catholics of the need to be welcoming, said Tucson Bishop Gerald F. Kicanas of the Dec. 16 las posadas event in Nogales.
“Welcome is part of what defines a follower of Christ,” he said. “Christ welcomed all sinners, Pharisees, lepers. He saw all as those He was called to love.”
The reenactment of Joseph and Mary’s search for a place to give birth to Christ united Catholics from the dioceses of Phoenix, Tucson and Hermosillo, Mexico.
Celebrating the border posadas reminds Catholics “that in God’s family there is no wall that divides,” the bishop said. “Every human being is a beloved Child of God.”
On the bus ride to Nogales, the group from Phoenix — many of them young adults — watched “Dying to Live,” a video about migrants’ journey into the United States put out by the University of Notre Dame.
Rob Curtis, youth minister at St. Raphael and Our Lady of the Valley, led the group in a spiritual reflection.
During the posadas, a couple dressed as Joseph and Mary travel from one house to another, asking to be let in through song. Time and again the reply comes back that there’s no room.
On the border, the Arizona group asked to be let in to Mexico.
“We felt the separation that exists, the wall that divides,” Bishop Kicanas said.
But then the group on the Mexico side, led by Archbishop José Ulises Macías Salcedo of Hermosillo, invited the Arizona group over.
“As we passed through the gates we were united sharing expressions of welcome, exchanging gifts, singing and celebrating together,” Bishop Kicanas said.
“It put a face on the migration issue,” said Elizabeth Shaw, a St. Raphael parishioner and a student at Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles. Her many visits to Mexico have influenced her studies.
“It wasn’t just dealing with immigration as a concept or ideal, but actually meeting people and seeing how it affects their daily lives,” she said.
Tricia Hoyt, director of the Office of Peace and Justice for Catholic Charities Community Services, said understanding the immigration issue requires direct person-to-person contact.
“We’re never really going to establish a relationship of mutuality until we have more opportunities to meet face to face,” she said. “We need to know our neighbors to the south as individuals, not as a stereotype.”
Hoyt, who came to the United States from Ireland, knows what it means to be an outsider.
“There’s something about the contemplation of Christ as the one who had to be invited in that is very meaningful to the Hispanic,” she said. “It really enhances our spirituality to see the Incarnation from that point of view.”
For Hoyt, Christianity cannot be lived without hospitality, “the deliberate choice to open our heart to that which is beyond ourselves, both spiritually and literally in terms of the border.”
Bishop Kicanas, a member of the U.S. bishop’s Committee on Migration, said the border posada was a striking way for Arizona Catholics to “enter the feelings and experience of the Holy Family.”
“Many today experience the anxiety and concern Joseph and Mary felt to find secure lodging,” he said. “Countless numbers of people seek a home, safe from violence and war, safe to care for their children, safe to give their family a future.”
The U.S. bishops, through the Justice for Immigrants campaign, have promoted Catholic social teaching in immigration reform.
The bishops would like to see broad legalization of the undocumented and a family-based immigration system that ensures just working conditions.
Bishop Kicanas said the presence of Catholics from the different dioceses served as a reminder that the Church is bigger than the local parish.
“We are one as Catholics,” the bishop said, “united in our effort to carry on Christ’s mission.”
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