SOME of you might be familiar with the words of Pastor Martin Niemoller: “First they came for the Communists/And I did not speak out/Because I was not a communist.” The same held for Socialists, trade unionists and Jews.

“Then they came for me/And there was no one left/To speak out for me.”

These are haunting words which challenge us to speak out and to act. In the Bible, St James also calls those of us who have faith in God to action: "Brothers and sisters, what’s the use, if someone claims to have faith, but [there’s] no action? Can faith save that person?

If someone is without clothes and doesn’t even have enough food for the day, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace – be warm and well fed’, but doesn’t supply their physical needs, what’s the use? In just the same way, faith on its own is lifeless, if it doesn’t lead to action."

Maybe as we witness the tragedy of tens of thousands of refugees who flee death in conflict and hunger and are on a journey of hope, the Gospel and the rest of the Scriptures call us to speak out for and to be close to the smallest and to those who have been abandoned.

–Father Mark Hogan