They might be angels.

Chrismastime brings on a migration of winged spirits. However, true angels may not be these undemanding precious cherubs but everyday ravished strangers and exiles in need of protection and refuge on our shores.

With the Thanksgiving Day parade behind us, the Christmas season is officially unfurled, and we are once again witness to the annual migration of angels. Like swallows to Capistrano, cherubs have come back to our homes, churches, and malls--mounted atop our trees and creches, suspended from arches and light posts, and carved into the snow by playful children of all ages. They pop up in kindergarten pageants, appear in church choirs, illustrate Christmas cards, and even decorate seasonal postage stamps. Along with mistletoe, poinsettia, and candy canes, these heavenly hosts suddenly fill the holiday air, and for a few short weeks they wing and sing into our hearts with Christmas cheer, only to disappear in the flurry of post-Christmas sales.

Recently, however, it would seem that an increasing number of these winsome spirits have broken their migratory patterns and chosen to linger among us long after the last dry evergreen has been laid at the curb. For in the last few years, angels have been appearing in all sorts of un-Christmassy places.

Suddenly books about angels are all the rage, with texts such as Sophy Burnham's A Book of Angels (Ballantine, 1990) and Joan Wester Anderson's Where Angels Walk (Ballantine, 1992) enjoying extended runs on the New York Times best-seller lists and spawning a flourishing industry of other angel books, newsletters, and calendars. People on talk shows tell of their encounters with angels, and others start support groups to get in touch with their inner angel. Angelic figurines and designs are a hot item in specialty shops, and angelic music (Gregorian chant) is the surprise popular and classical hit of the season.

Angels have appeared on Broadway in Tony Kushner's two part "Angels in America," in the movies in "Angels in the Outfield," and most recently in a new television series, "Touched by an Angel." And last Christmas, when both Time and Newsweek did articles on this increasing fascination with all things angelic, they not only reported that a majority of Americans believe in angels but also that a surprising number feel they have encountered one.

And the narratives of these encounters make it clear why this current crop of angels might be enjoying such a surge in popularity. Story after story relates how these New Age winged spirits either rescue folks from catastrophic events or offer a warm, nurturing presence in the face of cold and frightening situations--and all without requiring any sign of repentance, conversion, or doctrinal allegiance. (Perhaps this new batch of cherubs has been catching old reruns of Michael Landon's "Highway to Heaven" on celestial cable.

Who could fail to like such a friendly and undemanding band of extraterrestrials? For many folks living in contemporary secular society, these angels probably slake a deepening thirst for something spiritual while offering them a hopeful reminder of God's protective love--not a small boon to souls feeling frightened and lost in a stormy world.

And yet a spirituality so sweetened and tamed by such undemanding cherubs threatens to sentimentalize Christianity and reduces the gospel's stark call for reformation of our lives to a cheap or irrelevant grace incapable of transforming us or our world. It is hard to see why anyone would be crucified for so saccharine a message as the one carried by these modern cherubs.

In scripture, however, the angels God sends among the Israelites are often fierce and even terrifying creatures, delivering a word that unsettles and disturbs, a word calling for repentance and conversion, a word sending the pilgrim back into the world on a very frightening mission. Indeed, biblical stories of angels are often striking challenges to change our lives and to imitate the impassioned love of God for our neighbor.

Perhaps no story exemplifies this better than Genesis 18 and 19, where first Abraham and then his nephew Lot are visited by strangers who turn out to be angels. Sarah and Abraham welcome their unexpected guests with abundant hospitality, showering the strangers with every possible comfort and treating them as if they were wandering nobility. As a result of this generous hospitality to strangers, the aging couple is counted as just and blessed with a child, Isaac.

When the strangers arrive at Lot's home in Sodom, however, his own hospitality is undone by a violent mob demanding the strangers be handed over for rape. In the end, Sodom is condemned and destroyed for this unbelievable inhospitality, and Hebrews reading this tale of visiting angels were reminded of God's command to treat strangers and sojourners with hospitality.

Indeed, the Israelites had good reason to show hospitality to pilgrims and sojourners, for as Yahweh constantly reminded them, they had all too often been aliens and strangers themselves. Jacob and his children were driven from their own lands by famine, while conquering armies transformed Isaiah's compatriots into hapless exiles. In both Egypt and Babylon the homeless children of Israel discovered the bitter and vulnerable lot of resident aliens. Even when Moses led them out of slavery, a generation of Israelites were rebuffed at every gate and port and turned back from the lands they tried to enter as dangerous and unwelcome guests.

Thus, when the Israelites came into their own land, God demanded that they behave well toward those economic and political exiles who lived among them, and not imitate the cruelty of Sodom or the oppression of Egypt and Babylon, but take on the just and merciful compassion of God. The alien was not to be cheated or taken advantage of but treated as one of their own, specially protected by the Lord. As Yahweh tells Israel in Deuteronomy, "Love the stranger then, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt" (10:19).

In the New Testament Christians find ample reasons to be compassionate to aliens and sojourners, for again and again Jesus identifies with and reaches out to the unprotected foreigner. The second chapter of Matthew reminds us that the Christ child and his parents were themselves refugees in Egypt, driven into exile by a murderous despot, while the Last Judgment scene in Matthew 25 has Jesus reminding his disciples that any kindness shown to the homeless is a kindness shown to him.

Stories of Jesus breaking bread with and working miraculous cures for all sorts of foreigners, as well as Luke's parable of the Good Samaritan (10:29-37), remind us of God's call to be neighbor to the stranger. As the author of Hebrews notes, "Do not hesitate to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares" (13:2).

As Americans and Christians, we have good reason this Christmas to listen to the angel story of Genesis 18 and 19 and to consider our own obligations toward the stranger and sojourner. Angels are not the only migratory creatures in our midst--this is also the age of refugees.

We live in a world increasingly awash with immigrants and exiles, a world where, at last count, the United Nations' High Commissioner of Refugees estimated that there were more than 18 million officially designated refugees driven from their homelands by war, civil unrest, and persecution. That number is up from about 5 million only a decade and a half ago and does not include millions more internally displaced persons or still countless others in flight from famine or brutalizing poverty.

Most of these people--primarily women and children--are in Africa and Southwest Asia, with 6 million Afghans in Pakistan and Iran, 2.5 million Palestinians in U.N. relief camps, nearly 2 million persons being shoved across the borders of Ethiopia, Somalia, and the Sudan, and now 2.5 million Tutsis and Hutus in flight from genocidal war in Rwanda. Added to this are millions of others fleeing persecution and war in Bosnia, Mozambique, Cambodia, Vietnam, El Salvador, Haiti, and Iraq. Whether jammed into overcrowded boats or waiting listlessly in camps along national borders, the faces and numbers of the world's displaced remind us of our duty to the stranger.

In response to this growing scourge of humanity, the U.N. established the office of High Commissioner for Refugees and mandated, in the 1951 U.N. Convention on Refugees and its 1967 Protocol, that member nations offer safe harbor and just treatment to all persons with a "well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion."

Within Catholic social teaching Popes John XXIII (Peace on Earth) and Paul VI (Call to Action) further argued that not only political but also economic refugees should have the right to emigrate and immigrate and that nations everywhere had a moral duty to try and receive as many of these citizens as reasonably possible. In the U.S.--itself a land of immigrants with a national monument on Ellis Island inviting the world's oppressed and poor to take safe harbor--federal law (The Refugee Resettlement Act of 1980) follows the U.N. Convention and offers refugee status based upon humanitarian concerns without reference to "race, sex, nationality, place of birth, or place of residence."

Unfortunately quite a few wealthier nations have recently begun to complain of "compassion fatigue," and just as the need for aid and asylum are on the upswing, groups working for the displaced are often facing budget cuts. Thus, millions of refugees are finding a chilling and unjust reception when applying for help.

In America, in spite of the law, refugee status has all too often been a tool of national interests or foreign policy--preference being given to persons fleeing communist regimes while victims of torture from so-called friendly countries, such as El Salvador or Guatemala, are systematically ignored. So, too, domestic policy, as well as race, influences decisions about refugee status--as is clear from the preference given to Soviet Jew and Cubans and the almost total denial of such rights to Haitians and the entire continent of Africa (except for the Marxist regime in Ethiopia).

Indeed, our record in Haiti is exemplary of the impact of race and national interests on refugee status. Between 1981 and 1991 the U.S. Coast Guard, in accord with an interdiction treaty, boarded boats fleeing Haiti's oppressive regime and, after summary inquiries without the presence of counsel, forcibly repatriated over 23,000 Haitians, granting refugee status to only eight persons. This may be contrasted with the warm reception Cuban exiles received on the same open waters, at least until Castro saw fit to use the refugee issue as a political football.

The question facing us this Christmas, then, is not whether we believe in angels, but what we can do to show hospitality to the angels in Rwanda, Afghanistan, Haiti, and El Salvador. In the season when Perry Como croons that "there's no place like home for the holidays," and Bing Crosby promises that "I'll be home for Christmas," newspapers tells us of millions of children and their parents who can find no place in the inn.

There are certainly 1,000 things anyone of us might do, but let me offer a short list to prime the pump. First, this Christmas send a holiday card to your senators and representatives urging them to reform our current treatment of refugees by paying more attention to humanitarian concerns rather than so-called national interests. You might even suggest that devastating poverty and hunger could be important considerations in choosing among candidates for this refugee status or that we should increase our foreign aid to places and groups supporting large refugee populations. (After all, foreign aid is less than 1 percent of the federal budget, and the U.S. is rated about ninth in aid to refugees, so we may not be on the brink of compassion fatigue just yet.

These letters may seem small, but they work for Amnesty International--and it's unlikely that too many others are writing on behalf of the poorest and weakest in the world.

Second, you might join with others to sponsor or join a refugee program in your parish, town, or diocese--doing anything from running an education night (show "El Norte" or "Grapes of Wrath" and discuss the experience and rights of migrants and refugees), to requesting your pastor to preach on refugees for the feast of the Holy Family, to getting involved in some advocacy for the rights of aliens and refugees. Every diocese should be able to put you in touch with Catholic resources for both education and advocacy.

Finally there are numerous human-rights and social-justice groups hungry for support and new members, places where you can educate yourself about issues and work with others to make a difference. Certainly a few that could use your support include the U.S. Committee for Refugees, Oxfam America, Doctors without Borders, and the various human-rights--watch programs.

In the end every household shows hospitality to strangers in its own way. What's really important is that we find some way to welcome these angels.