Taking the Time to Make a Difference

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I couldn't tell what language they were speaking. My wife and I were sitting nearby, and the conversation of the nearby couple was animated, but their words were unfamiliar. We were in Toronto, a fascinating city, the site of this year's convention for members of the Catholic media, and full of people speaking many languages. We had no excuse to try to talk with the other couple, so I will never know what language they were speaking or where they came from.

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Where do you come from?

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I know a few facts about my family origins, from a family Bible, from stories told by my parents and others, and from records I found at the Mormons' genealogical library in Salt Lake City. My father's grandparents were married in the Catholic Church in Bellheim, Germany, in 1797. I knew that is true because I saw with my own eyes a microfilm copy of the parish records, showing the date of marriage for Valentin Leingang and Magdalena Walthers. German Catholics were very precise about keeping records of births, baptisms, marriages and deaths. Members of the Bellheim Leingang family came to the United States, as did many other families from their homes along the Rhein River in Germany. My wife's ancestors include a young couple from an area that is now part of Croatia, a young man and a young woman who left the places they knew to settle in the American Midwest. I wonder what it was like, knowing full well that they would never see the land of their birth again. I know that in both stories, for my wife's family and mine, that the ancestors found some comfort and support from relatives or others who also came to settle in the same places. It was the new world, but the new people could speak the old language and celebrate familiar feast days. I know "my people" had a tendency to stick together - and that is an understatement. For example, there are families with my same last name in Washington State, who must be related to me somehow. According to their stories, their ancestors came from the same town in Germany, they emigrated to Russia as a group, and they then left Russia as a group and came to the American northwest, as a group. I know people left Central and Eastern Europe for many reasons - to escape military conscription, to find land to farm, for new opportunities economic and social. Instead of peace and prosperity, many found hard work in factories and mines, at slaughter houses and on railroad construction crews. Not everyone found fame or fortune, enough land to farm, not even escape from war. One moment of discovery for me, one I will never forget, was finding a civil war tombstone in southern Indiana for a man who shared my last name. I'm sure we are related somehow.

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One of my great joys toward the end of Lent is learning more about the Jewish ancestors of early Christians, and the Seder meal from which we Christians have borrowed so much for our liturgies. Over and over, in the phrases of the Seder meal, we hear how "we were all in Egypt," how we were all slaves, how we all have been saved.

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Where do we come from? What is certain to say is that we are all immigrants. Our families may have come from Europe in the 1840s or across the Bering Straits in prehistoric times. Or from Mexico or Guatamala. Or from any number of places where other languages are spoken and other customs are followed. We are all on a journey, searching for kinship or the sound of a language we recognize, with or without good records of where we have been.

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As you reflect alone, or tell your stories to your children about where you came from, think about how have you or your ancestors been welcomed - or rejected - along the way. We are called to "welcome the stranger" - not an easy or a simple task. Perhaps it is time to understand that "the stranger" Jesus expects us to welcome is a member of a family, not an isolated individual. Take the time to learn more about the complications of today's laws for families whose members include children who are citizens by birth and parents whose presence may be illegal, undocumented or simply uncertain. Then take action to ensure that all who are on this journey are treated with justice and respect, as brothers and sisters of our Lord, members of the one family of God.

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