A Eucharistic Theology of the Immigrant in JB Metz’s Memoria Passionis

Abstract

Toward the end of his pontificate, Pope Francis turned the Church’s attention to the needs of the immigrants, who sometimes live in hopelessness of the moment and uncertain future. In the wake of presidential proclamations in relation to mass deportations, Pope Francis wrote to the US bishops: “The rightly formed conscience cannot fail to make a critical judgment and express its disagreement with any measure that tacitly or explicitly identifies the illegal status of some migrants with criminality. [Even though] a nation has a right to defend itself, ...the act of deporting people...damages the dignity of many...and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness.” As an immigrant myself, I have always grappled with what it means to be Catholic, especially in these fractured times for fellow immigrants, many with whom I work, most of whom have come here in a bid to seek better lives for themselves and their families.

I find in Johann Baptist Metz’s theology of Memoria Passionis (dangerous memory), a paradigm rooted in the Eucharist that advances the kingdom of justice for those who suffer in general and the suffering immigrant in particular. In our present moment in the face of othering the immigrant, Metz’s Memoria Passionis provides a language of hope and solidarity for the immigrant community. This paper explores Metz’s memoria passionis as a helpful Eucharistic framework for articulating a theology of hope for the immigrant. In other words, a eucharistic theology, understood through the lens of memoria passionis contributes to a theology and spirituality of hope for the immigrant. My hope for this project is therefore Metz’s hope for those who suffer in this world: a hope that defines a future in which the suffering of others is taken up by those who take the Eucharistic and Christian message of solidarity seriously. This project therefore contributes at once to a theology and/or a spirituality of the immigrant, and a new framework for Eucharistic theology that attends to those who suffer, such as the immigrants in our world.