Yesterday, some 60+ parishioners and others went on pilgrimage to Liberty Island to pray for America on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and to identify with and express support for immigrants, past, present, and future.
We began with Mass at Our Lady of Victory Church on William Street and a rousing homily by Paulist Father Bruce Nieli, who was inte inspiration behind the event. We then walked to Castle Clinton and the Battery Park Terminal, praying the Rosary along the way, with stops in front of the National Museum of the American Indian and the Saint Elizabeth Seton Shrine. The first decade was prayed in thanksgiving for the immigrants of the past, whose faith and labor built the Church and country we have inherited. The second was for appreciation and justice for Native peoples, that our national celebration be marked by honest memory and deeper reconciliation.. The third decade was for all who serve immigrant families through works of mercy and for the strength of those families to endure. The fourth was for immigrants and asylum seekers presently in transit or waiting, that their dignity be upheld in the in-between. The final decade was for all the future immigrants to our country and that the nation's next 250 years be shaped by welcome rather than fear.
From the Battery, we took the ferry to Liberty Island, where we heard Emma Lazarus' famous poem New Colossus, which transformed the meaning of that monument into a beacon of hope for generations of newcomers to America, and which famously concludes:
"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
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