The Christ you encounter

He gazes from his portrait with steely determination, one eyebrow raised.

I look at the picture of my great-grandfather, an exile from the Irish famine, and I lift one eyebrow to match his. I feel close to him, even though he died decades before I was born. I grew up on the family farm that he established.

Family lore says he watched his mother starve to death. Born in 1843, he came to the U.S. as an orphan.

America is a story of exile and migration. It’s also a story of millions whose ancestors were brought here forcefully in the fetid holds of slave ships. And it’s a tale of Native Americans, nearly decimated by later arrivals. We all have a tale of America to tell, some of it sorrowful.

In this century, we live in a world on the move. Climate change, corrupt governments, poverty, war — they make life unlivable for millions.

What is our reaction to this? Our response says much about who we are as Catholics.

Some spread the lie, actually a myth, that most immigrants are criminals. Study after study refutes this, said National Public Radio, citing several studies that show less crime and lower incarceration rates among first generation U.S. immigrants than Americans in general.

When an immigrant does commit a heinous act, no one should seek to tar all immigrants because of that crime. We won’t label all 20-year-olds as assassins because one young man scaled the roof of a building and took a shot at a presidential candidate.

Another misconception is that we don’t need immigrants. In my neighborhood, the tree removal workers and the roofers speak English as a second language. The workers who were killed when the Baltimore bridge collapsed? Immigrants. Farm workers? Lots of immigrants.

We need to stand up for Catholic agencies on our border. Annunciation House in El Paso was challenged by the Texas attorney general for its work, all within legal bounds, of helping refugees. The governor of Louisiana has vetoed $1 million in funding for a Catholic Charities agency because of their work with migrants, even though the cuts will hurt impoverished citizens as well.

As Americans, we have a right and a need to control our borders. For decades presidents of both parties have grappled with the issue. Few deny that our system is broken, actually making it harder on migrants. Congress has repeatedly failed to act, but cries wolf about border policy when it suits their political purposes. I yearn for the day when Americans of both parties civilly discuss the road ahead for immigration and leave the cheap slogans behind.

We need to focus on the humanity of migrants. St. Teresa of Kolkata described the poor with whom she worked as “Jesus in his most distressing disguise.”

The same Jesus who meets us in Scripture and at Mass meets us at the border. If we can’t see him in those desperate people, how do we face him in the Eucharist?

There are things we can do. Jesuit Refugee Services and Catholic Relief Services help migrants worldwide. Nearly every Catholic Charities agency in the U.S. helps migrants and refugees in some way, and they can use volunteers. A friend’s son is volunteering at Annunciation House. A friend is teaching English to migrants in her Pennsylvania neighborhood.

My great-grandfather faced discrimination in America. But he persevered, and helped his exiled fellow countrymen found a Catholic church, St. Patrick’s Dublin, in farm country.

American history is a story of struggle, and the question is, are we on the side of Jesus, in his distressing disguises? Are we doing what we can?

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