Every day brings us a new image of people on the move. The migrant, the refugee and the evacuee have become as widespread and as welcome as the common cold. Recent years have heaped images of fleeing refugees upon us: the victims of wars, natural disasters, economic collapse and ethnic divide. Maybe we have seen so much that the problem of migrations has become more tedious than tragic.
The place of the migrant in society has always been a sorry one. In the Book of Ruth, we read the lonely story of a Moabite woman in Hebrew lands and the kindness she received from a farmer named Boaz. From the story of Ruth gleaning in Boaz's fields to the Romany plying the furrows of cars at an Irish road junction, the story remains ever the same - there is little welcome in any society for the foreigner.
Migration has played a formative role in the Irish psyche. From our earliest years, our spirituality has struggled with the desire to make something positive of migration. In the works of the Ceili De, we read of "green martyrdom", the sacrifice of the one who undertakes voluntary exile for the sake of Christ. This martyrdom has inspired thousands of our people to spend their lives as missionaries throughout the developing world.
The modern missionary is the green martyr of our day. We have made this exile holy in Abram's calling: "go from your country and from your father's house, and I will make a great nation of you" (Genesis 12:1). Many Irish people have taken solace in the hope that great things might be achieved in the abandonment of the homeland for the sake of Christ. At home, we look upon our missionaries with pride and are thankful for the generosity shown by these ambassadors of our long-suffering race to those less fortunate than ourselves.
Unassisted by the promise to Abram and its spiritual comfort, many Irish emigrants have been forced to take up their roots and separate themselves painfully from all they love and know to try to make a better life abroad. If the trauma of that decision was not enough, the immigrant must often face hostility in the host country. History teaches us that the Irish met their fair share of prejudice over the years. Quite often, it was only through a combination of charm, skill and luck that the migrant found a welcome within the new society. As often as that happened, it was not always the case. Charm, skill and luck fade when faced with a bias against colour, race or accent.
Over the past 200 years, Irish migrants travelled to the four corners of the English-speaking world and struggled against the odds to integrate into these societies. Weighed down by lack of education, a culture of poverty and privation and a language that many despised for its synonymy with poverty, these people struggled as foreigners, outsiders and blow-ins. They were isolated from family, home and culture, they were foreigners gleaning in foreign fields. A few of them became famous; a greater part lived unremarkable lives and some never made it at all.
Times change; today's migrants are likely to be high-flyers in the business field, in science or in technology, rather than economic migrants. They are not emigrants; they are the "ex-Pats" (a term that contains its own irony). From Tyneside to Tokyo and from California to the Cape, they are doing very well for themselves and we are proud of them. We now speak of our emigrants as the "diaspora". Sadly, this group does not include the road-builders, domestics and panhandlers who have disappeared or retired into poverty and oblivion in the cities of Britain and the United States. Nor does it include those who left our country for a reason other than an economic one over the years. Our candles do not always burn as brightly for these people.
Emigrant Sunday is a small effort to address the wider issues caused by the flight from this island. It offers a time to reflect with pride on the achievements of our brothers and sisters in the wider world. It invites us to ponder on the sadness of families torn asunder by the separation of emigration. It saddens us with concern for those who did not make it. This Sunday challenges us to be like Boaz receiving Ruth when we encounter the migrant in our midst. When, and only when, all four groups are considered, we can look upon ourselves with pride, thankful for the care and generosity shown by our long-suffering race.
F. MacE.