City in Focus president says Mary and Joseph experienced same difficulties as today’s asylum seekers
The B.C. Catholic
As 163 Syrians woke up on their first day in Canada, a local Christian community reflected on the plight of another famous group of refugees.
“What Jesus experienced, or Joseph and Mary because Jesus was a baby, is in many ways parallel to the stories we hear from refugees,” said Tom Cooper, president of City in Focus, Dec. 11.
“They had lost their family, they had lost their friends. Joseph had lost his job,” as they fled from Bethlehem to Egypt.
Cooper was speaking in a room full of refugees, settlement workers, and other guests at an event called “Jesus and Other Refugees” at the Vancouver Club Dec. 11.
It was the morning after the first wave of the 25,000 Syrian refugees the government promised to take in were welcomed in Toronto Dec. 10.
“Watching the prime minister at midnight, with his coat off, his tie off, his shirtsleeves rolled up, greeting and welcoming people from Syria, was mind-boggling and touching,” Cooper said.
The stories of many refugees in the room had parallels with the Holy Family’s flight to Egypt and the airplane of Syrians.
“There’s a similar theme of faith. God, His mercy, His guidance, were at work. For Jesus’s family it came in the form of a star, it came in the form of Magi coming and worshipping Him, and it came in the form of angels in dreams warning Joseph to flee from Galilee to Egypt,” he said.
“In our refugee friends, it also comes. They also have their own history of how God stayed with them, how God heard their prayers, and how God guided them. They have also felt the love of God’s people as they hit Canada in a variety of ways.”
Rawnaq Paikar, of Muslim background, fled Afghanistan a year and a half ago with his wife and young child.
“It was one of the biggest decisions and most difficult decisions we ever made,” he told The B.C. Catholic after the breakfast event.
Paikar, who has a background in public policy, was a consultant for the government. He felt increasingly unsafe in Afghanistan until, afraid for the lives of his family members, he decided to flee.
“We could not stay there. We decided to leave in a matter of a week. We packed up everything quite quickly.”
Two days after landing in Canada, his family was connected with Journey Home Community, based in Burnaby. The non-profit Christian group was supportive, and connected his family to many helpful resources.
Paikar was shocked. In Afghanistan, “a mosque is a place for religious formalities. That’s it.” In Canada, he found, “the church connects people to God, people to each other, and people to resources. I was thinking if I have the chance I would tell the mosques to do this.”
Rita Kharikian, a Chaldean Catholic from Kirkuk, Iraq, landed in Canada 20 years ago.
“We left in 1992, right after the Gulf war,” she said. Her father, a tailor, sold his shop and their furniture and they fled to Jordan. “When we left, we had no idea where we were going. It was very scary.” Kharikian was 9 at the time.
They headed to Italy, where they met a woman who worked for Canadian immigration services. She connected them with Precious Blood Parish in Surrey.
Once in Canada, the sponsoring parish “welcomed us, they brought us mattresses, they brought us food, and they invited us for a Christmas dinner. Everybody was kind and generous,” she said.
“We felt very welcome. Everybody was kind and generous and they didn’t know us.”
Now a member of Sts. Peter and Paul Chaldean Mission, Kharikian helps file applications for such things as refugee sponsorship, MSP, child benefits, and GST for new and arriving refugees from the Middle East. It’s an opportunity to give back, she said.
