My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?
Immigrant & Refugee
Ministry Coordinator
~ A single mother of three, pregnant with her fourth, goes to the ICE office in downtown St. Louis. She has been summoned quite unexpectedly. Years ago, her asylum case was dismissed because she was determined to be a low-priority case for deportation. If she returns to her home country, she faces threats to her life. At the ICE office, she is accompanied by her lawyer, a priest, and two other allies; however, their presence and pleas on her behalf seem to make no difference. As expected in these days of deportation quotas, she is detained by ICE and sent to jail, treated as a dangerous criminal.
How can we not see Jesus, the Suffering Servant, in her face? How can we not hear his cry, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” Is she abandoned?
In the great irony of this lament, it is precisely the abandonment of Jesus, who is wholly Divine, that draws our God entirely into the deepest pain of our fragile human experience, that is, feeling utterly abandoned by God. Through the Cross, God knows her suffering and is with her in it.
While I hold this truth deeply in my heart, it cannot remain there obscured and inert. Dorothy Day says, “We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.” It is in our loving communion with one another that God’s solidarity with those who suffer becomes undeniably clear.
Currently, there is a small group of parishioners who with our Immigrant & Refugee Ministry are dreaming and scheming about how we might build a greater sense of communion with our immigrant siblings. Initially, they hope to be a “village” of support and solidarity for one immigrant family in our community. They will need your gifts: time, talent, and treasure. I invite you to consider how you might join this effort to guarantee that no one feels abandoned. For more information contact Chelsea Deiters (chelseadeiters@yahoo.com) and Mary Lisa Penilla (mlpenilla7@gmail.com).
You can read more about the story mentioned above in a March 15 article in the Post Dispatch (see attached below). Please share this story to make a difference. https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/column/tony-messenger/article_d1fa3fa9-6659-402b-9d01-ad7f989a126a.html
Throughout the year, we present an article in the bulletin each week on a variety of topics, written by a member of our Parish staff or ministries on a rotating basis.
