Thoughts, Prayers & Art

For the Immigrant and the Refugee in the Crosshairs of Empire

Originally published: June 11, 2025

You, beloved wanderer,
carried across deserts and detention lines,
with blistered feet and prayers
stitched into your skin like survival songs,
you are seen.

Though the halls of power 
spit your name like venom,
though the pens of presidents
scribble you into shadows,
the Kingdom of Heaven has already
written you into its heartbeat.

You are not a stranger.
You are the story of the Christ.

For who was He
if not the refugee child,
swaddled in Mary’s shawl,
fleeing the wrath of a bloodthirsty king?

Who was He
if not the hunted one,
the asylum-seeker in Egypt’s night,
cradled by a mother whose eyes
held the same terror as yours?

And now,
look!
He wraps His arms around you still.
His robe soaks in your tears.
His nail-scarred hands
shield your child from the tear gas 
and the gunpoint.
His breath whispers in the cages:
You are mine. And I will not forget you.

The flag behind you flaps like a wound,
its stars dimmed by silence,
its stripes soaked in the blood
of the dreamers it promised to shelter.

But your body
your brown, beautiful, weary body—
carries more holiness
than any marble monument built on stolen land.

Do not believe their lies.
You are not the crisis.
You are the conscience of this country,
the cracked mirror
in which we must see the face of God.

And to the Empire we say:
Your border is not the boundary of God’s love.
Your cages will rust.
Your cruelty will rot.
And your presidency
though loud with decrees and wrapped in fear
cannot silence the holy uprising
of compassion, of resistance,
of saints who march beside the displaced.

We are the midwives of justice.
We are the sanctuary that sings.
We are the fierce, aching hands of the Church
ripping open our walls
to make room for God again.

So come,
lay your head on our shoulders.
Let your sobs be safe in our arms.
The Christ who weeps with you
is rising.
And so are we.