Reflection on 5,000 rough sleepers, many of them refugees, in London

Bloomsbury, central London Nov 2024. ICN/JS

Fr Dominic Robinson SJ, Parish Priest at Farm Street Church and Chair of Westminster Justice and Peace Commission gave the following reflection at today's Home Office Vigil:

5,000! These last few weeks of Winter here in London I've been more aware than ever of the 5,000 people rough sleeping in the city usually with the minimum of covering and shelter from the elements of cruel winter and of how blessed I am to have that facility. At our Westminster City Council sponsored night shelter, staffed and hosted by our volunteers and those of other Churches, we spend time chatting to those who have nowhere to lay their heads in our city and we meet so many who are seeking asylum, fleeing perilous situations and now left in limbo, not able to use their gifts to supplement our workforce, with no recourse to public funds. It is these we remember here today too as we mourn those who didn't make it.

The migration crisis is not an easy one to solve. Many in the building in front of us are well intentioned and I dare say many will explain we are all doing our best. But it is the crisis of our times and the Christian who believes in the Gospel we heard today, cannot just put down the scroll and say that's the end of the story, mere words. Because the Word of God cuts to the quick. In schools around our diocese we have the privilege in Justice & Peace to visit from time to time I see so many young people fired with a desire for justice, to make a difference, to bring something of the Kingdom of peace and justice to our world both near at home and overseas. And this is a cause for consolation at the start of a new calendar year and this Holy Year, this Year of Jubilee, when we mark Christ's birth and so are all invited to get to know Jesus better and make him known through the radicality of his message which challenges the status quo in society.

At this gathering and so many on the streets and in our places of work and worship I sense hearts often restless, wondering what an impact we really have in the midst of an increasingly unjust society. Just as the Three Magi we recall in this Epiphany Season we search for something better. The kings, whoever they were, arrive at the face of God in the baby in the crib - and that transforms their lives and they return another way. As they go on searching, always journeying, learning as they go, they are brought face to face with who God is, the God whose identity and mission are one, who in his frailty, rejected, his family itself forced to flee into Egypt, shows us our mission to look out for the weakest as that is where we find God, or rather God reveals himself to us.

This Holy Year 2025, declared open when Pope Francis entered the Holy Door at St Peter's in Rome on Christmas Eve, invites us to hold open that door and invite those we know to encounter the God of justice and of peace. Through our own personal testimony, through our solidarity with those whose lives are ended or torn apart through needing to flee, we can show, reveal, the face of God who came as a slave of injustice to free the downtrodden, to proclaim a time of favour for all and especially those on the margins or discarded as unwanted numbers in our society we dare to call civilized and human.

The call to make a choice, an option for justice, for peace, for liberty. For Jesus this reading from Isaiah is not an assigned reading for the day; Jesus makes a deliberate choice. The passage that Jesus reads from Isaiah reveals the choice he has made for how he will carry out his mission. When Jesus concludes his reading from Isaiah he adds, "Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing." The "today" was not only that day back then in the synagogue, but it is our "today" as well.

So let us in this year of jubilee be attentive to where God is present in our lives, where Christ God's Word Incarnate, is present. May our communities be places of welcome and hospitality to those who are shut out and may this witness to a change of heart towards compassion, towards a recognition of where Christ is to be found.