This prayer was originally sent to us by Caritas El Salvador for the thousands of migrant men, women and children undertaking a long and dangerous journey on foot towards the US border, in the migrant caravan in 2018. They were fleeing poverty, violence and persecution in their home countries of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador.
Lord, look with compassion on your migrant children.
Watch the suffering with which they walk,
carrying their children to foreign lands
to save them from violence, hunger and poverty.
Look how they endure fatigue, hunger, thirst;
about to faint with illness along the way.
A way that seems to have no end
for those whose strength is failing and can go no further.
Help them, Lord, to find compassion
in those they meet on their way.
Bless the friendly hands that give them bread and water
and invite them to rest and renew their strength.
Open to them doors and borders,
open the hearts of their sisters and brothers
so they are not rejected,
but find a roof, a job, a lifeline.
Father, we ask you this
in the name of your son Jesus;
he too emigrated from his homeland into Egypt,
fleeing the violence of Herod.
Amen.