Madison Moskowitz

Sharing this remarkable image, José y Maria, by Everett Patterson, seems even more urgent this year. In the past, I’ve delighted over the clever visual puns (Dave’s City Hotel, Weisman cigarettes and Mary’s “Nazareth High School” sweatshirt) and in the reminder that Mary and Joseph were, like this couple, desperate young people looking for lodgings, when there was “no room at the inn,” as one translation of Luke’s Gospel has it. In the past few years, there has been an intense debate (mainly online) over whether Mary and Joseph were refugees. To me, it seems clear that they were, at least during the “Flight into Egypt” where they flee a murderous king, leave Galilee and travel to Egypt to take refuge. That fits the classic description of a refugee: someone who leaves their homeland out a “well founded fear of persecution.” Some people say, well, they were still in the Roman Empire, which is beside the point. Do we really think that a poor couple from Galilee would have considered Egypt their homeland? Popes since at least Pope Pius XII have agreed. He called the Holy Family the “archetype of every refugee family.” But before that, as a couple looking for lodging, they mirror thousands of couples and families today who have been denied “room at the inn.” In the United States, couples and families (and children) looking for “room” have been harassed, rejected, arrested, beaten, imprisoned and tortured. “No room at the inn.” I will never understand how people can treat other human beings like this—even if they are, or are assumed to be, somehow breaking the law. Christ is present in every person, and every person has infinite dignity--whether you are Joseph and Mary, José y Maria, or an unknown person looking for room for their family. If we delight in making room in our homes for our Nativity scenes, and delight in making room for Baby Jesus in the creche’s manger, can we make room for Christ, who is present in every migrant and the refugee? José y Maria, pray for us. (Image: "José y Maria," Everett Patterson everettpatterson.com/)