23 Million. 23 million is the number of refugees that are
currently in the world. Over 5 million of them are from Syria and over half of
them are children under the age of 18.
Many of you know that I was privileged to go with Catholic
Relief Services to Greece and Serbia earlier this year to work with the Syrian
refugees – to see their plight, to hear their stories, to provide what aid we
could. So I was very interested to hear about the UN Summit for Refugees and
Migrants that was held earlier this week.
At that Summit, President Obama read a letter from Alex
who saw the picture of 5 year old Omran Dagneesh, a casualty of the bombing in
Aleppo, as he sat filthy, bloodied, and dazed in the ambulance. Here is what
the letter said:
Dear President Obama,
Remember the boy who was picked
up by the ambulance in Syria? Can you please go get him and bring him to [my
home]? Park in the driveway or on the street and we will be waiting for you
guys with flags, flowers, and balloons. We will give him a family and he will
be our brother. Catherine, my little sister, will be collecting butterflies and
fireflies for him. In my school, I have a friend from Syria, Omar, and I will
introduce him to Omar. We can all play together. We can invite him to birthday
parties and he will teach us another language. We can teach him English too,
just like my friend Aoto from Japan.
And I will share my bike and I
will teach him how to ride it. I will teach him additions and subtractions in
math.
Thank you very much! I can't
wait for you to come!
Alex
6 years old
“We will give him a family and he will be our brother”.
I was thinking about Alex and about the rich man in the parable.
Alex was willing to share his toys, his time, his home – and make him his
brother. The rich man behaved as if he wasn’t even aware of Lazarus lying at
his gate, and if he was aware, he was too complacent to care. What had happened
to the rich man? Where did he lose the compassion and the kindness that even 6
year old Alex could display? Had he grown into a life of cynicism? Was he
ruined by a habit of self-indulgence? Did he just react to people like Lazarus
out of fear?
The rich man is not named in the parable – maybe he could
be any of us. It’s not his wealth that’s the problem – it’s his indifference. He
isn’t able to reach across the gap that separates him from Lazarus, and as a
consequence, that gap becomes an enormous abyss in the afterlife. After death,
he recognizes Lazarus, he even knows his name, but it’s too late. The abyss is
already too large to get across.
There is a gap, too, between us and young Omran and all
the Syrian refugees. In a sense, these refugees lie at our gate, perhaps not
covered in sores, but wanting only to take some of the crumbs that fall from
our very, very, rich table. They are:
·
Ahmed whom I met in Serbia - an electrical
engineer and who had to move his family three times to escape the bombing and
the violence that threatened him, his wife, and his four boys
·
Hiatt – whose husband was killed in this brutal
war, and who was making this trip with her 5 children. Her children hadn’t been
to school in three years because of the war, she explained, and she was trying
to find a new home where, in her words, her children could learn, and not just
learn war
·
Or Samir – a young boy of about 8 who lost his
shoe when his foot got stuck in the muck as he got out of the overcrowded
rubber raft that had brought him and his family from Turkey to Greece. Since we
didn’t have any shoes to give him, we tried to make a new shoe out of 5 or 6
pairs of socks
·
Or Saad, Nabil, and Hussein – three young men in
their 20s whose families had sent them all on ahead to be “ice-breakers” as
they are called – to find places to live for their families to establish a base
so that they could pave the way for their Mom and Dad, brothers and sisters,
Grandma and Grandpa.
In commenting on this parable earlier in the year, Pope
Francis said that as long as Lazarus was lying in front of his house, there was
a chance for salvation for the rich man – but once they are both dead, the
situation was irreparable. It was too late.
The rich man had squandered his chance to do the right
thing. He had missed the sign of God’s kingdom in the everyday affairs of his
life.
We must reach out to Lazarus, and Ahmed, and Hiatt, and
Samir, and Saad, and Nabil, and Hussein and bridge the gap – “give them a family
and make them our brothers and sisters “– and we have to do it now - before
it’s too late.
