My dear brothers and sisters in Our Lord Jesus Christ; this Sunday, through the lectionary, Our Lord places before us the commandment of love for our neighbour. Building on this injunction, a commandment that we have an obligation to comply with, Holy Mother Church teaches us in the Catechism:
Even if it does not contradict the provisions of civil law, any form of unjustly taking and keeping the property of others is against the seventh commandment: thus, deliberate retention of goods lent or of objects lost; business fraud; paying unjust wages; forcing up prices by taking advantage of the ignorance or hardship of another. (CCC no. 2409)
These teachings help us to engage with a scenario that played out in the shadow of the venerable Sé of Goa some weeks ago. After playing football all day long with other members of the Cathedral parish, two blue-collared migrant men borrowed the bike of a friend, another migrant worker. Slightly inebriated these two men charged down the wrong side of a one-way street and rammed into the recently purchased vehicle of another parishioner, a local. Outraged, and because he had not purchased an insurance, the violated man, snatched the key of the scooter that the two errant men were on, and indicated that only after they coughed up a substantial sum - arbitrarily arrived at – to repair the damage to his new vehicle, would he return the key to them.
This scenario is an apt description of situations encountered in many parts of the world. As law and order breaks down – more so in Goa than any other part of the world, I imagine – one can understand the frustration of people, who can no longer rely on the state agents of law enforcement – in this case the police. And so, they take the law into their own hands.
But what does the morality of Our Lord teach us? Already, before His incarnation, he spoke of this through the words of the Prophet Isaiah which we hear in the first reading:
You shall not molest or oppress an alien
The (not only) trouble with the Goan parishioner’s action was that the bike, whose key he had illegally and illegitimately impounded, did not belong to these two men, but to a third person, who was now deprived of his property for no reason other than the fact that he had loaned his bike to his friends. As Our Lord says, through the prophet Isaiah:
If you take your neighbor's cloak
as a pledge,
you shall return it to him before sunset;
for this cloak of his is the only covering he has for his body.
What else has he to sleep in?
There are pressures in the life of a migrant that those who have the privilege of not having to migrate, or the opportunity to live as expats, may never understand. It is for this reason that we must take care that we never molest or oppress the alien, whether through the law, or outside of it.
There is, however, a parallel obligation on the migrant: to follow the law, and to love the community that accepts them.
Speaking at the Autumn Plenary assembly of the Nordic Bishops’ Conference in September this year, Bishop Erik Varden had some veryilluminating words to deal with the complex scenario that accompanies the overwhelming wave of migration that has overtaken so many parts of the developed world – and it not unknown in in India either. Bishop Varden pointed out that as Christians “it is our duty to extend a helping hand to those in need, to open our doors to the homeless, to share our material wealth with the poor.” However, he went on to elaborate, the Catechism also teaches us that immigrants are:
obliged to respect with gratitude the material and spiritual heritage of the country that receives them, to obey its laws and to assist in carrying civic burdens (CCC no. 2241).
Creatively drawing on the sixth century Rule of St. Benedict, he pointed out that:
St Benedict sets a radical standard. He decrees that all guests — who will chiefly be paupers and homeless folk — must be received as if they were Christ himself. As soon as they knock on the door, the porter is to exclaim ‘Deo gratias!’ and ask for their blessing. The abbot is to wash their hands and feet. Every kindness is to be shown them. The community must exert itself to meet their needs. Such is the law of Christian hospitality (RB 53, 66).
But this is for guests; for those who wish to stay, St. Benedict’s approach is different. They are to be kept waiting for a while, and are to be read the rule, repeatedly, to not only indicate the norms of the community to which they wish to belong, but to internalise their importance. As Bishop Varden puts it:
to belong to a community is a trying, demanding business. It requires generosity and determination. It calls for a will to nurture fellowship of intent.
And so we have it; one has an obligation to love the alien, but one has also the obligation to respect the community one belongs to and to which one wishes to join.
The words from St. Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians offer us the ideal to which we are all – natives and aliens – are called to live:
in every place your faith in God
has gone forth,
so that we have no need to say anything.
For they themselves openly declare about us
what sort of reception we had among you,
and how you turned to God from idols
to serve the living and true God
and to await his Son from heaven,
whom he raised from the dead,
Jesus, who delivers us from the coming wrath.
May Our Lord grant us the wisdom to discern the way of love.
(Image reference: Christ Washing the Feet of His Disciples (detail), Nicolas Bertin, c. 1720 and 1730, Art Institute of Chicago.)
No comments:
Post a Comment