In the past, every people used to have clear borders, both geographically and culturally. We, on this side, and the others, on the other side; we do like this, they do like that. Now, what was there is here: even here, we do this and that. For us, it is actually an ancient phenomenon: Italy, for instance, is a multi-ethnic mixture as a result of many migrations. Also, Italians are spread everywhere ‘looking for bread.’
Nowadays, thanks to the mass media, the world is a global village, without borders. The opportunity for cultural inter-fertilization threatens to become like a gigantic blender that reduces all the diversities to a homogenized mash consumable by everyone, within every parallel and meridian. Yet, the most visible diversities remain: skin and language. They point out the stranger whom I perceive as an enemy. Hence, fear, that starts defensive and then becomes aggressive. As soon as I can, I ‘eat’ the stranger, digesting what I like and throwing out the rest. It is an anthropophagous attitude: I accept the other person inasmuch as he/she is useful to me, and I refuse him/her, as a human being like me, who is like a mirror of myself. The mirror shows me my limitations: he/she is my double, always detestable and to be eliminated. I want to be unique!
The other than myself reminds me of who I am myself: a fragile being that comes from dust and to dust returns. I am “human” (in Latin humandus), from inter (in terra), i.e., to be put underground, to be buried. I can live out this limitation either as fear of death and ‘place’ of fighting or as a desire for life and ‘place’ of solidarity. The choice is up to me: I can either ‘export’ the death I fear or become an image and likeness of God who is love. If I suppress the other person, I kill my own identity; if I accept him/her, I accept myself.
The Bible is a long eulogy of the stranger. Abraham receives the command: “Leave your country, your homeland and your father’s house, for the land I will show you” (Genesis 12:1ff). We also, his children, are “strangers and pilgrims on earth” (Hebrews 11:13). Nobody is an owner: we are all guests of others’ hospitality, sustained by the earth and surrounded by the sky. Our future will depend on our capacity of living out diversity as communion, at all levels. Our intelligence starts understanding when it leaves the obvious and goes to the alien and limitless realm of unknown realities. The heart itself blossoms when it goes out of itself towards what is different. The clash with others can kill me; the encounter with them, instead, “puts me into perspective,” makes me relative to my brother and opens me to my dignity/identity as child of God.
The encounter brings some problems. What about polygamy? Monogamy is a point of arrival in man/woman relationship. Also among us, because of divorce, “successive polygamy” is present. The state that orders the common good, must find the answer. The Church, as well, must find the answer. Let her propose to the faithful healthy principles without imposing them. But, above all, she must create the conditions for the principles to be lived by and witnessed, without pushing into a ghetto those whose marriage is already on the rocks.
As witnesses to the Gospel, let us welcome other people as we ourselves are welcomed by God. Whoever welcomes a stranger, welcomes the Lord (Matthew 25:44). The poor, kicked out of my door, is the Lord Himself who knocked in order to dine with me (Revelation 3:20). What I do to Him will save me. The name of every poor person is Lazarus, which means “God is our help” (Luke 16:19ff). It is God Himself who stands there in order to help us save our humanness. It is He who is drowning with the poor barges of migrants when we chase them away from our shores.
© Popoli – www.popoli.info
