Towards an ever wider “we”

Sunday 20th June 2021

This Refugee Week, Caritas Salford invites you to join us to reflect on the challenges facing refugees and asylum seekers.  Faced with an agonising choice, some have risked everything to seek a place of safety and security, a place to build a dignified life, to fulfil their aspirations, where they can have hope for the future.

As we continue to face the challenges of the current health crisis, we also need to remember those of us facing the additional challenges of isolation, loss and often discrimination, especially refugees and people seeking asylum.  People like Rania and Amira…

This year for the 107th World Day of Migrants and Refugees, Pope Francis asks us all to consider an “ever wider ‘we'”, no longer thinking in terms of ‘them’ and ‘those’, only ‘us’.

In a letter, Pope Francis asked the following of all people: “I make this appeal to journey together towards an ever wider “we” to all men and women, for the sake of renewing the human family, building together a future of justice and peace, and ensuring that no one is left behind.”

He wrote: “Our societies will have a “colourful” future, enriched by diversity and by cultural exchanges. Consequently, we must even now learn to live together in harmony and peace. I am always touched by the scene in the Acts of the Apostles when, on the day of the Church’s “baptism” at Pentecost, immediately after the descent of the Holy Spirit, the people of Jerusalem hear the proclamation of salvation: “We… Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs – in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power” (2:9-11).”

You can read the full message here

On this day, we pray:

Holy, beloved Father,
your Son Jesus taught us
that there is great rejoicing in heaven
whenever someone lost is found,
whenever someone excluded, rejected or discarded
is gathered into our “we”,
which thus becomes ever wider.

We ask you to grant the followers of Jesus,
and all people of good will,
the grace to do your will on earth.
Bless each act of welcome and outreach
that draws those in exile
into the “we” of community and of the Church,
so that our earth may truly become
what you yourself created it to be:
the common home of all our brothers and sisters. Amen.

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