MIGRATIONS
INTRODUCTION
The title of my homily for this 14th Friday in Ordinary Time is, “Migrations.”
Today’s first reading from the end of the Book of Genesis describes the final step of how Jacob - now called “Israel” - and his family migrate to Egypt. Hunger and famine in the land of Canaan dictated Jacob to send his sons to Egypt to buy grain to survive.
The Book of Genesis is preparing us for the second book of the Bible, Exodus - which begins with how the Jews began to become persecuted and forced into slave labor - and so they escaped - exited - migrated from Egypt - and headed for the Promised Land of Palestine in order to set up their nation.
Today’s first reading from Genesis describes carts and livestock, husbands and wives, children and grandchildren - all migrating to Egypt.
THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD
The history of the world is a history of migrations.
It’s the stuff of story. It’s the story of families.
It’s good to know history. I would assume by the year 3011 the world will be very different - with different boundary markers - with more cocoa colored sking - and those living will know by DNA and whatever else they will have come up with by then - their origins - much better than we do today.
I celebrate that in 1996 I got to see for the first time where my mom and dad migrated from: the west coast of Ireland. However, right now, I don’t know how and why their relatives settled there a long, long time ago. And I’m sure that’s a long, long story.
I have a picture on my wall right above my desk - that shows what my mother would see if she walked out her back door. It’s a picture of rocks and water. She liked to say she could sit on their back step and put her big toe into Galway Bay. The house is gone. But the flagstone for that back step was still there. My mom’s sister, Nora, was there in 1996 to point all this out to us. My dad’s house - less than a stone throw away - as the Irish put it - is still standing.
My mother said she would kiss the land of America - every time she came back here - because she knew where she came from: poverty. She made it in America. One of her last jobs was working on Broadway - 32 Broadway - where she cleaned offices at night.
OUR SCRIPTURES
I like to point out that what people did for us with our Sacred Scriptures - telling us our faith roots - where we come from - we need to do for our families. In other words, we have to put together our scriptures.
The good news is that people have been doing this a lot in recent years. Alex Haley’s book Roots - with some of its roots in Annapolis - the genealogy movement - The Story Project program - and various other movements have certainly helped with the push.
Everyone’s story is a story of being rooted and being uprooted - moving and settling - and then moving on - settling down and on and on and on.
Aware of this and having an interest in all this gives me a greater love for all peoples.
So I’m saying that the Book of Genesis - Beginnings - is telling us that people come together in all kinds of different circumstances. I’m saying that all people are migrants. I think that’s why one of the first questions we all ask people, “Where are you from?” and “How did you get here?”
We are a world of migrants.
America more than most places….
The timing is the different. Native Americans are migrants from Asia - between 40,000 and 17,000 BC. Vikings sailed to Greenland, Newfoundland, Vinland in 962 AD. Whether Vikings got to Minnesota seems speculative - but it gave a football team a good name. And we have to laugh about comments that people make about other people. I love to say that Hispanics were here before the English - but don’t tell some people that - because they aren’t ready to migrate in their mind to some new thinking and on and on and on.
So I think it’s important to read good histories of our national origins - or watch good documentaries on TV.
It’s good to know where we come from - as well as where others come from. I am grateful for some good books I’ve read about Ireland. I am very grateful that I took the time to jot down my father’s story - at least 47 hand written pages before he died - and I taped my mother telling me her story before she died so suddenly.
CONCLUSIONS
In our study and in our research and in our story telling we’ll find what we find in the scriptures: good times and bad, sickness and health - as well as great gratitude for our deep roots - as well as the surprises when we get out of our carts and begin again in some new spot.
And the New Testament will bring us to the great story: that we are migrants into the next world.
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Scene on top of a painting I saw in a funeral parlor somewhere - showing a priest blessing a family heading to America and leaving land and friends behind.
