Caring for migrants and refugees is not optional for Catholics.

It’s amazing that this is even a question these days, since it was for so long assumed as a given, but why should Catholics care for refugees and migrants? More broadly, why should Christians?

The answer is straightforward. It is part of Jesus’ overall call to care for those in need, which finds special resonance in the Gospel of Matthew, in which Jesus includes care for the “stranger” as one of the litmus tests for entrance into heaven for Gentiles and, by extension, for all his disciples (Mt. 25:31-46).

In his public ministry, Jesus continually reaches out to those who are suffering: the poor, the sick, the hungry, the forgotten and the excluded, in examples too numerous to mention. He is frequently described as being “moved with pity” when he sees an individual or a crowd suffering or in any way in need. But more specifically, in Matthew 25, in a section often called the “Judgment of Nations,” Jesus says that if anyone welcomes the “stranger,” they welcome him. More pointedly, if you don’t welcome the stranger, you don’t welcome him. And how a person cares for the stranger, in addition how a person cares for the sick, the hungry, the imprisoned and so on, is the litmus test for entrance into heaven.

Now, there is some dispute about whom Jesus is addressing in this part of Matthew’s Gospel. In the Sacra Pagina series of Gospel commentaries, Daniel J. Harrington, S.J., a noted New Testament scholar, suggests that the probable recipients of this message are Gentiles of Jesus’ time, that is, non-Jews. But as Father Harrington notes, the implication is clear for all of Jesus’ followers. “If good works to Christians are so important for non-Christians (and non-Jews) to perform, how much more are they to be expected from Christians (and Jews)!” The exclamation point is from Father Harrington.

Nations have the right to protect their borders, broadly speaking. But this does not absolve the Christians within those borders from doing all they can to help migrants and refugees. To stand with them. To take their side. And telling them “Go home!” is not what Jesus had in mind.

The desire to protect national borders does not outweigh Jesus’ clear command to help the stranger. Nor does the difficulty of the venture: Jesus’ commands are not meant to apply simply when it’s easy to do so. If that were so, it would be excusable to ignore whole groups of people that Jesus asks us to help. It’s often a great challenge to provide for the poor, to feed the hungry, to visit those in prison and to care for the sick. Obviously, caring for large numbers of refugees and migrants is a burden (which is often greater for poorer countries). Christians are supposed to do it anyway. Difficulties, logistics or complications do not negate Jesus’ commands.

Jesus’ words also find their roots farther back, in the Old Testament. In the Book of Exodus, God tells the people of Israel, “You shall not oppress a resident alien; you know the heart of an alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt” (Ex 23:9). So care for the “alien” does not originate in Jesus. But he deepens that call, personalizes it and offers it as the clearest test for entrance into the reign of God.

Tactics like mass deportation, therefore, are completely anathema to Catholic social teaching and contrary to the Gospel call to care for the needy. The recently named Archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Robert W. McElroy, called that possibility “incompatible with church doctrine,” and Pope Francis called it “a disgrace.” Such strong language reflects the fundamental requirement to care for the poor and needy, as commanded by Jesus over and over.

But Jesus’ casting of himself as the “stranger” is rooted not only in his deep knowledge of the Torah, but in his own experience. As many have pointed out, Jesus himself was once a refugee, along with Mary and Joseph. The narrative known as the Flight into Egypt, which follows the Nativity in Matthew’s Gospel, recounts the story of Joseph being told in a dream to flee Nazareth, and travel to Egypt, to escape the murderous designs of King Herod, whose plan was to kill children around Jesus’ age (Mt 2:13-23).

As a result, the Holy Family fits the now-classic definition of the refugee as a person fleeing their homeland out of a “well-founded fear of being persecuted.”

There have been numerous attempts to downplay or deny the refugee and migrant status of the Holy Family. Some argue that since the Holy Family was still traveling within the Roman Empire, they never left their home country. Yet the residents of Galilee would certainly not have considered Egypt as their homeland. Besides, as Father Harrington points out in the Sacra Pagina commentaries, Egypt was not under the jurisdiction of Herod at the time, so this would have been seen as fleeing into a new land, out of “well founded” fear.

In his apostolic constitution on migrants and refugees, “Exsul Familia Nazarethana,” published in 1952, Pope Pius XII makes this point clearly. “The émigré Holy Family of Nazareth, fleeing into Egypt, is the archetype of every refugee family. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, living in exile in Egypt to escape the fury of an evil king are, for all times and all places, the models and protectors of every migrant, alien and refugee who, whether compelled by fear of persecution or want, is forced to leave his native land, his beloved parents and relatives, his close friends, and to seek a foreign soil.”

Pope Benedict XVI was even more direct. In his Angelus for Jan. 16, 2011, he said, “Jesus’ parents were also obliged to flee from their country and seek refuge in Egypt, to save the life of their Child: the Messiah, the Son of God, was a refugee.”

So let us finally put to rest that the migrant and refugee are somehow outside of the call to follow Jesus as a disciple. A refugee or migrant is not simply the one whom Jesus asks us specifically to care for. Each one is something much more: Jesus himself.