Did you know the Holy Family were refugees too?

NBC has a story of stranded migrants suffering freezing cold conditions in Serbian Warehouses:

Several hundred men, mostly from Afghanistan and Pakistan, remained in an abandoned customs warehouse, where aid organizations distributed heaters, blankets, clothes and food in an attempt to keep them warm as temperatures dropped to 5 Fahrenheit. Some 7,000 migrants from Asia and the Middle East are stranded in Serbia. Refugee camps are packed and only women and children are likely to be let into them, leaving the men to seek shelter where they can – in abandoned warehouses in central Belgrade, or the fields just south of the border.

[Read More: Extreme weather threatening refugees’ lives in Greece, humanitarian groups say]

This week, as The Catholic Church celebrates National Migration Week, it is important to keep those suffering in these conditions in our prayers.

The story brought to mind an article Elizabeth Scalia wrote for Our Sunday Visitor in November:

Christ is born, and the family is making a hazardous trek through the desert and into Egypt, because it is not safe for them in Bethlehem, or Nazareth, or anywhere Herod reigns, and so they are migrating — they are refugees from terror. The Holy Spirit often uses the most confounding means and methods to get our attention and open us to God’s instructive promptings, so perhaps we shouldn’t marvel that a few years before immigrants and refugees became the stuff of our daily headlines (and a source of considerable consternation for people inside and outside of the Church) the U.S. Postal Service was pulling our thoughts in that direction. Yes, it speaks to our times. We see a family uprooted from everything they know, everything “normal,” comfortable and familiar. Not only are they unable to simply “go back” to the way things were, they are being led into something wholly different, with nothing to go on but trust: a man, a woman and a baby, moving against a whole world of uncertainty, injustice and danger.

It is incredible to think of the Holy Family as refugees, but our Savior began as one. As Catholics we are supposed to see the face of Christ in every living soul, we must take this to heart in a time when so many are in need.

How will we welcome the Holy Family when they knock on our door?