Homily at the Holy Mass for the 112th World Day of Migrants and Refugees

Your Excellencies,

Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

We give thanks to the Lord for gathering us this evening as one pilgrim people of faith to celebrate the Holy Eucharist, commemorating in a particular way the 112^th World Day of Migrants and Refugees, under the theme “Even Just One of These Children.”

As the Holy Father, Pope Leo XIV, has poignantly expressed in recent days: “To welcome a person means to integrate them as if they were part of one’s own family, offering them the opportunity to develop their gifts, abilities and sensibilities, but also to enter into the life of the household.”^[1]

There are few words in human language as simple and yet as profound as the word home. A home is more than a house or a place to stay. It is where we know that we belong, where our name is known, where our presence is expected, and where we can sit at the table without first having to explain why we are there. The Sacred Scriptures so often speak of salvation through the images of dwelling, table, and feast. To be saved is not simply to be rescued from danger.

To be saved is to be pardoned and brought into communion, to cease being a stranger, and to discover that in God there is a dwelling place prepared for us.

Today’s liturgical readings invite us to contemplate this mystery of our true home.

In the First Reading, the Prophet Isaiah raises our eyes towards “this mountain”, the mountain of the Lord. In the biblical world, the mountain is never merely a geographical height. It is a privileged place of encounter with God. Abraham ascends the mountain of sacrifice; Moses receives the covenant upon Sinai; Jerusalem itself is celebrated in Scripture as Zion, the holy city of God.

What does the Lord do on this mountain? According to Isaiah, the Lord prepares a feast – not for a privileged few, but “for all peoples”. He tears down the veil covering the nations, removes disgrace, wipes away tears and, finally, destroys death itself (cf. Is. 25:7-8). Everything that makes the human person feel far from home is overcome there: hunger, sorrow, shame, separation, and death.

Isaiah therefore gives us a vision of humanity, finally at home with God. And there is something particularly beautiful in the way the promise is expressed.

Its horizon is universal: the banquet is prepared for all peoples, yet God’s attention remains profoundly personal. He wipes away the tears from every face. Divine universality never becomes anonymity. God sees humanity, but within humanity He sees the person. He sees the multitude, and within the multitude He sees the tears of individuals. For God, the suffering of a displaced child does not disappear into the anonymity of a humanitarian crisis, because the cry of the most vulnerable always reaches His heart.

In the Second Reading from the Letter to the Philippians, Saint Paul speaks as a man whose earthly life was anything but settled. His apostolic mission unfolded along roads and across seas, in cities not his own, among communities that sometimes welcomed him and others that rejected him. He knew freedom and imprisonment, abundance and hunger, security and danger (cf. 2 Cor. 11:23; Phil. 4:12). Yet, in the midst of this instability, Paul tells us that he has learned a secret: “I can do all things in him who strengthens me” (Phil. 4:13).

Paul has discovered that his deepest security does not depend upon the stability of his circumstances. Christ has become his home. This does not mean that earthly homes no longer matter, or that hunger, displacement, and insecurity cease to wound. Scripture never romanticizes exile.

Rather, Paul has discovered a sense of belonging that goes deeper than mere geography: a communion which poverty, prison, and distance cannot take away. For Paul, Jesus Christ is not only the home in which he finds rest; Jesus Christ is also the way that leads him home. His strength does not come from possessing everything he needs, but from belonging to Christ and walking in His ways.

When faced with the immensity of suffering, we may be tempted either to think that everything depends upon us, or to conclude that, because we cannot solve everything, our small actions matter very little. Christian faith teaches us another way. “People who pray are not wasting their time, even though the situation appears desperate and seems to call for action alone” (Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, 36). Prayer is not an escape from responsibility but the source from which Christian service receives strength. It gives us the courage to do faithfully what lies within our reach and the humility to entrust to God what goes beyond our abilities. Trust in God does not diminish the need for solidarity with others. On the contrary, the person who has found a home in God learns to become a place of welcome for others.

In the Gospel, Jesus speaks of a king who prepares a wedding feast for his son. The connection with Isaiah in the First Reading is immediately apparent: God takes the initiative, He prepares the banquet, and He provides in abundance for all who are willing. The king’s invitation is simple: “Come to the feast” (Mt. 22:4). Yet some refuse, while others are too absorbed in their own affairs to respond. The king then sends his servants out to the roads, where those who had remained outside are invited into the feast and given a place at table.

Among those on the roads of our world are children whose experience of home has been painfully interrupted: children displaced by war, violence, persecution, poverty, or natural disasters; children separated from their families; children exposed to trafficking and exploitation; children who did not choose to leave and who have very little means of defending themselves.

Such defencelessness calls us not only to respond to their immediate needs, but - first and foremost - to recognize the dignity of the person before us. To protect a child is not merely to perform a duty. To protect a child is to safeguard the divine image imprinted within him or her. Before being a migrant, a refugee, an asylum seeker or a statistic, the child is a human person, created in the image and likeness of God.

In his Message for the 112^th World Day of Migrants and Refugees, Pope Leo XIV asks us to move beyond a “mentality of mere assistance”.

Certainly, humanitarian assistance remains indispensable: the hungry must be fed, those in danger protected, and those without shelter given refuge. Yet Christian charity cannot stop at alleviating needs while leaving the person on the sidelines. The Gospel offers us a deeper image. Those found on the roads are not merely noticed or provided for; they are invited into the banquet: “Come to the feast.” The movement is clear: from the road to the house, from exposure to protection, from temporary relief towards the security of belonging.

Here we perceive the full weight of the Holy Father’s appeal: “Even just one of these children.” Christian charity takes concrete form when we choose not to let the immensity of the problem obscure the dignity of even a single child, whose suffering presses with unbearable urgency upon our conscience.

As a community of faith, our response to those who have lost a home begins with the recognition that we ourselves have first been received into the home of God: before we welcome, we have been welcomed; before we make room, a place has already been prepared for us. When this grace is truly received, it does not leave the heart unchanged. The hospitality of the King becomes, little by little, the mission of the guest: communion with God enlarges the heart, so that having found our home in Him, we may in turn become a home for others.

Let us entrust all migrants and refugees, especially children, their families, and those who accompany them, to the maternal care of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who, with Saint Joseph, knew what it meant to leave home in haste, in order to protect a Child threatened by violence. May Mary, Comfort of Migrants, obtain for us a “heart which sees”, so that those who are far from home may encounter through us, even now, something of the home God prepares for all His children. Amen.