To be Catholic is to belong to a Church that is universal. That’s the literal meaning of “catholic,” in it Greek root. The Catholic Church makes no distinctions of believers based on race, ethnicity, citizenship, or origins.
This sense of the human family immediately set the early Christians apart from their pagan and Jewish contemporaries. All the world was tribal. People looked out for their own and had little regard for strangers and foreigners.
God, however, had different designs. From the beginning, he created all human beings in the divine image and likeness (see Genesis 1:26-27). Divisions among nations came later, as sin became more prevalent. Eventually, God called one people apart, to be his own.
Yet he did not allow his Chosen People to use their special status as an excuse for mistreating foreigners. He commanded them repeatedly: “You shall not oppress a resident alien; you well know how it feels to be an alien, since you were once aliens yourselves in the land of Egypt” (Exodus 23:9; see also Exodus 22:20).
The greatest souls in Israel acknowledged the fundamental equality of all people. King David recognized that no one was a stranger to God — and everyone was equally foreign to him: “before you we are strangers and travelers, like all our ancestors” (1Chronicles 29:15).
Jesus put the matter in stark terms. However we treat a stranger, that’s how we treat him. “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me” (Matthew 25:35). Those who show kindness to foreigners (strangers, aliens) show kindness to God himself.
Those who are unkind to foreigners (strangers, aliens) show contempt for God himself: “I was a stranger and you gave me no welcome” (Matthew 25:43). Jesus clearly numbers our treatment of immigrants among the benchmarks that will define our particular judgment.
The leaders of the early Church counted hospitality to strangers among the most distinctive Christian virtues (see 3 John 1:5 and Hebrews 13:2).
We live in a time when transportation has made it far easier for people to move from country to country. We live today in a global economy that demands ever-increasing efficiency and ever-lower prices. In such a world, it is increasingly easy for us to fall back into a pre-Christian, tribal view of humanity. It is becoming alarmingly common even for Catholics to divide a native “us” from a foreign “them.”
How do you and I view the strangers among us? How do we think about them? How do we talk about them?
Do we see them as our brothers and sisters — children of the same Father, redeemed by the same sacred blood, and (at least potentially) worshippers at the same holy table?
In the parable of the sheep and the goats, Jesus insists that such questions should be essential to a Christian’s examination of conscience.
The Church does not prescribe public policy about how a nation should secure its borders. The Church does not forbid a country to protect its economic interests. These matters are beyond the expertise of the Church.
But the Church cannot help but insist upon respect for fundamental human dignity. The Church must, by its nature, call all Christians to unfailing charity in word and deed.
This is especially true in a land so young, a country composed mostly of relatively recent immigrants. “You know well how it feels to be an alien, since you — or your parents or grandparents — were once aliens too.”
So let’s begin that examination of conscience. Do you and I make judgments about foreigners living among us? Can we justify these thoughts, words, or deeds before Jesus?