Anyone who moves into a new neighborhood knows how important it is to be welcomed by their neighbors. Imagine how important such a welcoming is if you are coming from another culture and trying to make a home in a new land.

Such a transition is experienced by the many refugees from different countries who are resettled every year in the Louisville area through Migration and Refugee Services at Catholic Charities. The transition is made easier when these newcomers encounter a welcoming the moment they arrive in their new homes.

One example was the arrival in Louisville in early December of an Iraqi family — the first of a number of Iraqis expected to be resettled by Catholic Charities. This family found their apartment in the Shively area furnished and stocked with household goods.

The welcome wagon included four students at Mercy Academy who collected furniture and household items as part of a senior service project. The students “went above and beyond” in helping the family by providing 95 percent of the apartment’s contents, said Chris Clements, community resource developer for Catholic Charities’ Migration and Refugee Services.

A similar scene was repeated the week before Christmas when a Burmese family of nine came to Louisville. This time, nine Mercy Academy students provided furniture and household items for the family’s apartment.

These two examples of reaching out to help newcomers to our community are what the Catholic Church’s annual observance of National Migration Week Jan. 6-12 is about. “United as one family of God, let us commit ourselves (during this observance) to work together to create a truly welcoming community for migrants and strive to achieve justice for them at all levels of our American Society,” said Bishop John C. Wester of Salt Lake City, chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Migration.

Bishop Wester noted that National Migration Week reminds us that “though we come from many cultures and places, we are all part of one human family and members of the one Body of Christ.” But sadly, he noted, rather than “embracing newcomers to our land whose circumstances have compelled them to seek new lives among us, we too often respond in fear and harbor attitudes of resentment and suspicion.”

But such attitudes are not in accord with the Gospel. Bishop Wester explained: “If we fail to administer to the needs of these newcomers, we fail our Lord himself for he has taught us in the Gospel: ‘Lord, when did we see you a stranger ... and not minister to your needs?’ He will answer them, ‘Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.’ ” (Mt. 25: 44-45)

Welcoming newcomers today should be seen in light of our ancestral heritage as descendants of immigrants. As the bishops of Kentucky noted in a 2006 statement on immigration, “Our country is a nation of immigrants. Our ancestors came from many lands. Over the decades, such a diversity of peoples have enriched our culture, economy and religious experience.”

Our ancestors who came to the United States from different countries are not unlike the refugees and other immigrants who are coming to the Louisville area today. The Catholic Church embraced our immigrant ancestors by offering charitable services and supporting them in their efforts to build a better life. The church should not do less for today’s newcomers.

“Immigrant communities give ample witness to what it is to be church,” the U.S. Catholic bishops said in 2000. “For the church in the United States to walk in solidarity with newcomers to our country is to live our catholicity as a church. The church of the 21st century will be, as it always has been, a church of many cultures, languages and traditions, yet simultaneously one, as God is one — Father, Son and Holy Spirit — unity in diversity.”

National Migration Week is an occasion to renew this commitment and do our part in welcoming newcomers to our community. Like the Mercy Academy students who opened their hearts to recent refugees from Iraq and Burma, we can do the same by assisting the efforts of Catholic Charities in being a friend and a neighbor to those seeking to make a new life in a new country.