June 20, 2021: To risk dying to live with Danielle Vella

Preaching for the Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Danielle Vella offers a reflection on our call to enter into the raging storms that refugees and displaced peoples are navigating:    "Ultimately, however, they hope not only in the mercy and compassion of God Almighty but also in the mercy and compassion of their fellow human beings. It is this hope that propels them to go on those boats, to risk dying to live."   Danielle Vella is Director of Reconciliation Programs for the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS), an international humanitarian organization that serves refugees in more than 50 countries worldwide. A journalist, Danielle has also has written extensively about the experiences of refugees struggling to find a new life and future. One of Danielle’s most recent projects was writing Dying to Live: Stories from Refugees on the Road to Freedom, which was published by Rowman & Littlefield in February 2020. To interview refugees to share their stories, Danielle travelled extensively in Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, the Middle East and the United States. Her work has taken her to remote refugee camps, to land borders, to the seashore where migrant boats arrive, to immigration detention centres, and even to war zones.   Visit www.catholicwomenpreach.org/preaching/06202021 to learn more about Danielle, to reach her preaching text, and for more preaching from Catholic women.