Walking the Streets: Homily for Sunday, November 16, 2025

For those around the parish where I serve, we had a saint walking the streets. Mother Cabrini walked our neighborhood and served the poor. She sought out immigrants and migrants and served them, provided for their physical and spiritual needs. In times of difficulty for migrants and refugees today, will we walk the streets? Readings for today.

Walking the Streets

We have been asked this weekend by the Archbishop to incorporate some themes about immigration and migrants because of the celebration of Mother Cabrini, a feast we celebrated just this past Thursday.

The United States has had a challenging history in the treatment of immigrants. Despite the fact that early settlers from Europe were victims of religious persecution, they treated minority groups poorly when they arrived in the New World. With the rise of immigrants from Ireland, Germany, and Italy, many who were Catholic, prejudices and mistreatment increase. Irish Catholics need not apply was a well-known sign on many businesses in the United States. For Italians and Germans, the lack of English language proficiency added an extra burden.

Italian immigrants coming to the United States and a concern that they might lose their faith caused Pope Leo XIII to encourage a saint who walked in our midst to come to the United States. St. Francis Xavier Cabrini heeded the call. Despite her original desire to go to Asia, she came to the United States to minister to the Italian immigrant community, a mission that ultimately led her here to Denver in 1902 to serve the needs of poor immigrants who came to Colorado to work in the mines here.

She walked the streets right here near St. Dominic Church on Hooker and Grove seeking help for the poor immigrants. When God’s call came to Mother Cabrini, she said yes. The readings today remind us that the life we live is not our own. In fact, just as God called Mother Cabrini to serve the poor, so too does God call us. Mother Cabrini walked the streets of Denver so that we would have an example to do the same.

What we have today in scripture is stark. We will be called to give an accounting. We will suffer. We will be persecuted. And our judgment will not be in terms of how much money we have made or how successful our careers were, but rather how much we responded in love to the call of God to serve the poor.

St. Pope John Paul II reminded us that at the heart of being a Catholic was to evangelize, to share our faith in times when it is both welcome and opposed. This is our baptismal call. Today, evangelization takes more of an emphasis upon discipleship, following Jesus wherever he may lead us.

Where is it you will go to follow Jesus? What is it that Jesus is calling you to do to imitate his example? For Jesus was not afraid to break conventions. He interacted with lepers. He spoke and ministered to women. He made Samaritans the heroes of his stories of faith, for Samaritans were a group that experienced great prejudice.

Today, people in this country still seek out opportunity, but just as in ages past, those coming from desperate circumstances are subject to a climate that fails to recognize their human dignity. Just this week, the bishops of the United States issued a statement on immigration.

Overwhelmingly approved, part of the document says this,

“We are saddened by the state of contemporary debate and the vilification of immigrants. We are concerned about the conditions in detention centers and the lack of access to pastoral care. We lament that some immigrants in the United States have arbitrarily lost their legal status. We are troubled by threats against the sanctity of houses of worship and the special nature of hospitals and schools. We are grieved when we meet parents who fear being detained when taking their children to school and when we try to console family members who have already been separated from their loved ones. While our care is for everyone, a good number of these immigrants experiencing these difficulties are our brothers and sisters in faith. They pay taxes for benefits they will never receive. They are necessary to work in construction. They harvest our crops, milk our cows, and take jobs that many simply do not want. To be sure, nations have a right to regulate immigration, and ultimately the solution is to provide opportunities in all countries so that people can stay in the homes that they love. But because they have the same hopes for opportunity, the desire to feed their children, to educate them so that they can contribute to the common good, they, at great risk to themselves, come here.

Today’s readings remind us of the end times, and Jesus in Matthew 25 provides a stark reminder of the criteria for judgment. We are to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, care for the sick, visit those in prison. Jesus tells us this is the very way we serve him, and if we do not, it is the reason for our condemnation.

But the Bible goes further. We cannot be satisfied simply with good wishes. St. James tells us, “For if a man with gold rings on his fingers and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and a poor person in shabby clothes also comes in, and you pay attention to the one wearing the fine clothes and say, ‘Sit here, please,’ while you say to the poor one, ‘Sit there,’ or ‘Sit at my feet,’ have you not made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil designs?” And again, St. James tells us it is not enough to express good wishes. Stay warm and well-fed.

We must act. It is easy to preach to the choir, but Jesus tells us to invite those who cannot repay us, to invite those who are in the highways and byways, on the margins.

Next Saturday, November 22nd, people of good faith from Denver area parishes will celebrate with the Archbishop the Stations of the Cross. It is to give a public witness to those in the detention center that they are not alone, that they need to see that there are those of us who recognize their God-given dignity and seek to act on this recognition. It is at 11 a.m. outside the detention center in Aurora.

Consider coming to join us if you are a U.S. citizen. Those who are not documented are right to be concerned for their own safety, and it probably would be better to have that safety by not attending. Mother Cabrini walked the very streets around this very parish. Will you?

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