Jesus and family were 'refugees,' Ocasio-Cortez points out in Christmas message
Ocasio-Cortez gets abuse on Twitter for saying 'Christ's family were refugees too' in Christmas message
“The émigré Holy Family of Nazareth, fleeing into Egypt, is the archetype of every refugee family.”
– Pope Pius XII, 1952, in Exsul Familia Nazarethena
“Arise, and take the child and his mother, and flee into Egypt….” (Matthew 2:13).
'Jesus was a refugee', Pope Francis says ahead of World Refugee Day
And Jesus said unto us: I am the hope for them that are in despair, the helper of the helpless, the treasure of the poor and the doctor of the sick. (The Epistula Apostolorum: Epistle of the Apostles (140 - 150 A.D.))
Ocasio-Cortez gets abuse on Twitter for saying 'Christ's family were refugees too' in Christmas message
“The émigré Holy Family of Nazareth, fleeing into Egypt, is the archetype of every refugee family.”
– Pope Pius XII, 1952, in Exsul Familia Nazarethena
“Arise, and take the child and his mother, and flee into Egypt….” (Matthew 2:13).
'Jesus was a refugee', Pope Francis says ahead of World Refugee Day
And Jesus said unto us: I am the hope for them that are in despair, the helper of the helpless, the treasure of the poor and the doctor of the sick. (The Epistula Apostolorum: Epistle of the Apostles (140 - 150 A.D.))
Do you remember that passage from the Gospel of Matthew, where the Holy Family are attempting to flee into exile across the border from a mad ruler...and Mary and Joseph are detained as criminals and separated from the infant Jesus, who is subsequently put in a cage in a detention centre?
Of course, the actual Nativity we are all familiar with - through endless kindergarten and school plays, and festive greeting cards - doesn't end like that. While King Herod is off slaughtering the innocents to try and kill future claimants to his throne, Mary and Joseph safely cross the border into Egypt, where they are given sanctuary far away from the Judean monarch's infanticidal policies.
But sadly, in this day and age, such a fate - separation of refugee children from their families at a border - became a stark reality, as the world looked aghast at the ugly face of the Trump administration.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - who is a practising Catholic, as well as being a democratic socialist and progressive politician - recently became embroiled in a heated media storm with Trump supporting American pundits, over a Christmas tweet in which she said that Jesus and his parents were refugees fleeing persecution - and so implicitly comparing the plight of modern-day refugees on the U.S. border and in Europe with that of the Holy Family. Apparently, this is tantamount to sacrilege and blasphemy - judging by the reaction she received from certain quarters.
Her 'crime' was to remind her twitter followers of the bare facts of the original Christmas story and what befell the family of Jesus.
I, for one, completely agree with her and found myself feeling somewhat embittered by the vitriolic claims that she was exploiting the Nativity story and the festive holiday in the interests of narrow political opportunism and just couldn't give it a break to honour the sacred day.
The fact is that in fleeing Judea for Egypt - with nursing mother and child in toe - to escape the despotism and paranoia of King Herod in Judea, as he set about murdering baby boys, the Holy Family did become prototypes for families the world over and throughout history, who are forced by war, famine, discrimination or desperation to uproot themselves and seek shelter in an alien land for their personal safety.
There is undeniable social commentary at the heart of the Christmas story and of Christianity more generally. This is is evident to everyone who studies the texts in detail.
When the pregnant Mary contemplates the significance of her role as the future Mother of the Redeemer of the Human Race, in Luke's literary narrative, with the potent words, "God my Saviour...has looked with favour on the lowliness of his maidservant...He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty." (Luke 1:47-53), this should be a red-alert to readers that conventional societal norms are being called into question and that the Christ-child represents the birth of a hope that, while transcending this earthly world, radically inverts its values and oppressive structures.
This is the longest speech delivered by a woman in the New Testament and it has proved to be massively influential in the history of Christian thought. Mary begins by glorifying the greatness of God (Luke 1:46), acknowledges her devotion to the Lord (Luke 1:48), and then promises deliverance to the poor and oppressed through the reversal of unjust social structures, courtesy of the salvific hope she carries in her womb: the as-yet-unborn Jesus (Luke 1:50-53).
It is indisputable that the wealthy and prideful authority, alluded to in the Magnificat and foremost in the mind of the Evangelist, was King Herod.
Regardless of its historicity or lack thereof, the Nativity story as it has passed down to us is a powerful and truly beautiful parable. The Creator of the universe incarnates in the womb of a powerless Jewish peasant girl, wife to a humble carpenter. His first hours are spent in a manger intended for animal feed because there is no space for his family in the village inn or upper rooms, and his parents then, for his own safety, are compelled to flee their homeland for an uncertain future in another country to escape the clutches of a power-hungry monarch. His coming is announced first to shepherds (powerless country folk, on the peripheries of Judean society) and foreigners (the Magi), symbolising the focus of his mission as an adult to the excluded and marginalised. This baby boy, the victim of so much misfortune at his birth - the polar opposite of a royal upbringing or heroic origins, as with an ancient Greek or Roman aristocratic hero - grows up to be (according to the Evangelists) the "Prince of Peace" and true King of Kings, friend of prostitutes, sinners, the disabled, the poor, sick, the alien and the oppressed.
Yes, the Holy Family were refugees. And this is essential to understanding the intended meaning of the story. The Holy Family, denied any welcome and giving birth to Jesus in a stable, until finally given sanctuary not in their own country but in a foreign land by people of another race. The word to focus on is pheuge, “flee,” from which comes the word “refugee,” the one who flees. Thus even Matthew’s angel labels the Holy Family as refugees.
As Daniel J. Harrington, S.J., a New Testament scholar, reminds us in his commentary on Matthew in the Sacra Pagina series:
Egypt, which came under Roman control in 30 B.C., was outside the jurisdiction of Herod. Egypt had been the traditional place of refuge for Jews both in biblical times (see 1 Kgs 11:40; Jer 26:21) and in the Maccabean era when the high priest Onias IV fled there.
Why do some people strive to blunt the sharp social commentary-aspects of the Gospel message, yet claim fidelity to Christ?
His teaching:
'I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in...For truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me" (Matthew 25:38)
According to Ms Ocasio-Cortez's religion, the principles of the natural law dictate that due to the “unity of all mankind, which exists in law and in fact, individuals do not feel themselves isolated units, like grains of sand” for which reason “the nations are not destined to break the unity of the human race, but rather to enrich and embellish it by the sharing of their own peculiar gifts and by that reciprocal interchange of goods” (Pope Pius XII, 1939), meaning that "the natural law itself, no less than devotion to humanity", urges that “ways of migration be opened to people forced by revolutions in their own countries, or by unemployment or hunger to leave their homes and live in foreign lands” because “the sovereignty of the State cannot be exaggerated to the point that access to this land is, for inadequate or unjustified reasons, denied to needy and decent people from other nations” (Pope Pius XII, 1952).
Good on Ms. Ocasio-Cortez for preaching and living by these principles this Christmastime! Thank you for reminding us all of the events of the Christmas story.
We need more politicians like her.
Last edited:
