“Talita kum”. Two Aramaic words, spoken softly and with a force that crosses centuries: “Girl, I say to you, get up.” It is not a cold order or a distant mandate. It is an intimate, close call, pronounced at the height of fragility. In the passage, we can recognize that Jesus returns life to someone who seemed to have lost it. In that minimal gesture beats a greater ethic: when life fades, it is not enough to look; you must approach, pronounce the name, offer a hand, and support the rising.
Today, Talita kum continues to resonate as a social invocation. It awakens us from weariness, cynicism, and the habit of accepting the unacceptable. It invites us to stir ourselves as a community and to look at reality with dignity and freedom. To rise together, without fear of complexity, with the conviction that there are decisions that cannot wait any longer.
We are living through times of hardened borders and simplified narratives. Discussions revolve around figures, procedures, and deadlines, while too many lives remain suspended in an administrative limbo that erodes dignity. In that context, the proposal to regularize more than 700,000 people in Spain (January 2026) emerges as hopeful news. It is not an improvised gesture; it is the recognition of a reality sustained for years by those who work, care, build, clean, accompany, and silently support everyday life.
Regularization does not create a new reality: it names it. It does not invent coexistence: it orders it. It does not grant a privilege: it restores rights. That is why regularization should not be an ideological battleground, but an overwhelming logic that should have been adapted long ago. As has been clearly stated: “It is neither right nor left. It is a social need.”
I bring here some testimonies that arise…
Maria has been caring for the elderly for eight years. She has held trembling hands, accompanied farewells, learned to pronounce names and silences. She pays taxes, contributes to the neighborhood, participates in her children’s school. However, she lives with the daily fear of not being able to renew a permit that never quite arrives. “I don’t want papers to leave -she says-. I want them to stay without hiding.”
These stories are not exceptions. They are the daily pulse of a society that is already diverse and that needs policies that meet its reality.
From a believing perspective, Talita kum is a key to social reading. Raising the girl is raising wounded dignity; it is interrupting the logic that naturalizes exclusion. Faith, when it is honest, does not take refuge in the temple nor is it satisfied with good intentions: it translates into public decisions that care for concrete life.
In this horizon, the defense of broad and realistic regularization is not a circumstantial concession, but an ethical option. Regularizing is recognizing that coexistence is strengthened when rights are shared. It is assuming that social sustainability is not achieved by pushing thousands of people into invisibility, but by fully integrating them into the common fabric.
The biblical tradition is clear: the law is at the service of life. When the rule suffocates, it must be revised. When procedure excludes, it must be corrected. It is not about laxity, but about justice. Not about improvisation, but about responsibility.
Without rights there is no integration, and without integration there is no lasting coexistence. Regularization is not the end of the road, but the beginning of a possible citizenship, where duties and rights are mutually recognized. Listening to those who migrate is not a decorative gesture; it is a democratic requirement. Incorporating their experiences improves policies, corrects biases, and avoids paper solutions that do not withstand daily life.
We cannot stop promoting a culture of welcome, inclusion, and dignity, nor can we cease generating social awareness through a collective commitment. Also, each of us, institutionally and collectively, can raise our voices from hope. I genuinely believe that administrative guidelines and the sustainability of universal coexistence can and should take responsibility for the structural and vital inequalities that affect, especially, those forced to migrate and survive. This implies recognizing causes: prolonged conflicts, plundering of resources, climate crisis, global inequality.
It also implies acting locally: facilitating accessible registration, offering legal support, rethinking housing policies, defending the universal right to access healthcare and education.
“Talita kum” calls us to a civic conversion, to stop seeing migrant people as a problem and recognize them as part [of society]; to understand that the real economy already counts on them and that the law must catch up; to move from fear to encounter, from suspicion to trust, from discourse to practice. Standing up also means reviewing our narratives. Remembering that administrative irregularity does not define human worth.
There are moments when a society is defined by the voice it chooses to listen to. Talita kum is today that voice. It tells us: rise up, Europe; let us rise up, communities and organizations. Let’s make regularization a mature, fair, and effective decision. Not by ideology, but by humanity. Not by calculation, but by shared responsibility. Because when one person rises up with dignity, the whole community straightens up a little more. And then, life, finally, gets back on its feet.
Iñigo García Blanco, Marist Brother, i.garciablanco@gmail.com
ECLESALIA
English version translated with AI