It’s an ordinary Monday morning, the streets of London murmur with the buzz of people going about their day and James, Tim and I are hoping that the rain will hold off as we head towards Westminster. We had just been greeted by Sr. MaryAnne from the FCJ who warmly welcomed us to stop at their centre for Spirituality and EcoJustice in Euston, providing us with cups of tea and a renewed sense of the importance of collaboration and working together as the body of Christ.
We head back out, now accompanied by MaryAnne, to a building whose name carries fear, anger, and hope for countless people seeking asylum, a place whose policies determine who may stay and who must leave. The Home Office wasn’t a particularly significant-looking building. Fairly modern, practical, ordinary. I would have passed it by without noticing we had arrived, had I not seen a small group gathering with placards, “We Welcome Refugees”, “I was a stranger and you did not welcome me”, “Christians stand together for Refugees”. Organised by groups including Westminster Justice and Peace and London Catholic Worker the monthly prayer vigils are supported by various faith communities.
We greeted those we knew, members from Pax Christi, Laudato Si Animators as well as Westminster Justice and Peace members. We met new faces too, people connected to Catholic Worker, Quakers and the Anglican Franciscans. We met youth workers, local lay parishioners and Medical Missionary Sisters too.
It was so encouraging to see such good partnership across different groups and denominations, coming together to stand against division, evil and indifference.
As a key Columban mission priority, ‘welcoming the stranger’ is not just about extending a personal welcome, like at Fatima House in Birmingham or the many face-to-face projects we are involved with in the city, but it has deeper and broader implications too, a responsibility we share to enact within our nation and a calling we respond to for the sake of those we may never meet.
We began our prayer vigil with silence, followed by some hymns. Working businessmen and women emerge from nearby offices for their lunch break. Groups of young people walk past and tourists do too. I can see their eyes scanning our placards, they can hear our hymns and our prayers and they know who we are and what we are standing for.
A couple of passersby stop to talk and then move on. I can’t see into the Home Office but I do wonder what they are thinking, whether they are noticing, whether they are reflecting on our activity.
Names of people who have died seeking safety were read out, their causes of death also spoken aloud. Mothers, fathers, children, who died in the sea, on the land or in detention centres. I found this very powerful. Where much of the rhetoric regarding asylum seekers and refugees refers to them as a homogenous group, here were names and details of each of their deaths. It was an act of restoring dignity and recognising their humanity.
Br Johannes shared a reflection on the freedom to protest in this country and the authority given to us by Christ. After closing with some personal prayers I’m confident that all 30 participants of the vigil felt that same sense of the power of our presence there, of the certainty that we were doing something good and something vital and perhaps even something prophetic. And yet at the same time it was also ordinary. A routine Monday, a normal group of people, a typical London building.
As I write this I’m reminded of Jesus’ mysterious words about the Kingdom of God. A kind of kingdom that is like a mustard seed, or like yeast that rises a whole loaf, or like treasure in a field: small and hidden, yet immensely valuable, ordinary yet extraordinary. This group of faithful people have been meeting regularly every month for more than five years. What an honour it was to have a Columban presence in that space as a witness to the Kingdom of God at work, standing with the body of Christ across London in solidarity and in support of refugees.
