FROM THE BOUNDARY - Tribute to Caesar – Part 4
‘He is a communist’, a ‘fraud’, a ‘hard left socialist with a Marxist agenda’. He’s ‘reckless and foolish’. He’s ‘helping to destroy western civilisation and Christianity.’ Well: who is ‘HE’?
Here’s a clue. He said recently: “We Christians are a people of spring more than autumn. We believe our most beautiful days are yet to come. We do not cry in nostalgia, regrets and lamentations. We know that God wants us…to be tireless dream makers. It is not Christian to walk with a downward gaze, without lifting our eyes to the horizon…as if there was no destination and no port in our lives, and we were forced to an eternal wandering…’ Behold, I make all things new’.” Well, they’re powerful words, aren’t they, wise words, comforting words full of hope? To the Christian, do those words sound ‘reckless and foolish’? They’re words that tell me that with God there’s never an end to things, only ever a beginning – and that that’s how it is with us, if only we knew it.
I’d better come clean, if you haven’t already guessed. ‘HE’ is Pope Francis and, though he troubles me, I admire him enormously. I call him the ‘Apostle to the Fugitives’ – the homeless, bereaved, sick and elderly, of course, and the prisoners and orphans, but most especially refugees and migrants. Not since John Paul 1, with his gentleness, humility and literary charms, from whom every smile was a blessing, have I felt so sensitive to the claims of a Pope to be Christ’s Vicar. How sad, then, that some Cardinals of the Curia smirk and ‘tut’ behind his back, call him the “little Argentine”, and mouth “We made a mistake.” For Francis, the Church is “at the service of this world by being faithful to Christ and his Gospel, free from all mundane spirituality, free from the risk of being concerned about itself, of becoming middle-class, of closing in on itself, of being a clerical Church; able to offer itself as an open space in which all can meet and recognise each other because there is space for dialogue, diversity and welcome” (Cardinal Maradiaga). Yes – and that’s as it should be.
Very well. But what of migrants and refugees? It’s a subject to which Francis ever returns. Last month, for next year’s World Day of Migrants and Refugees and with forthcoming UN agreements in mind, he articulated the Gospel response: welcome, protect, provide, integrate. Refugees should have better options to resettle legally, he said, together with “adequate and dignified” accommodation and services. He denounced detention of migrants who enter countries without authorisation, and collective and arbitrary deportations especially where migrants’ human rights are threatened in their home countries. They should be guaranteed a range of services including legal assistance and a monthly minimum wage, he said. Children should never be detained and should be guaranteed the right to remain at adulthood. H’mm - tell that to Trump.
Francis has previously referred to the “globalisation of migration”. Migrants and refugees are not “pawns on the chessboard of humanity”, he’s said. No, they’re our “brothers and sisters” searching for something other than death – “and their cry rises up to God”. “They come in boats”, he said, “vehicles of hope which become vehicles of death”, and our task as Christians is “to give voice to those who cannot manage to make their cry of distress and oppression heard.” Let them experience “new, welcoming relationships which enable them to enrich their new countries with their professional skills, their social and cultural heritage. Well, they’re fine words, aren’t they, as fine as rice paper and as vulnerable? There’s no doubt they reflect the Gospel as action in the world.
At the root is the law of love. To refuse to shelter the impoverished and oppressed conflicts with the parable of the Good Samaritan. “We will be judged”, Francis says, “on the basis of works of mercy. The Lord will say to us ‘The migrant who so many wanted to kick out, was me.’” The question ‘Who is your neighbour?’, “becomes a cry for all in need. They’re all your brothers and the blood of every one of them cries out to all of us just as it cries out to Jesus.”
We can’t disown our neighbours. If we do, we deny their very humanity – and our own. It’s all about the love within us. Christ, you see, knows no national boundaries, and his Church is Mother to all.
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t’s such a powerful Gospel, isn’t it - one world, one humanity? Surely, it’s the finest gift the human race can offer itself. Yet, is that how the real world of nation states moves, can and should move? Does it pay proper regard, as Caesar must, to the frailties of his people, to their expectations for themselves, their children, their traditions, culture and religion, their homeland? And what if there’s personal danger in Gospel-ing, if not now, then in generations to come? May not the world of Christ become a world of terror and death? Do we really expect Caesar to close his eyes to the risks? History would call him a fool, not a saint, if he did.
Go safely, then – until the next time.
Snook cocking from the boundary: “The world can be a false friend on a lonely path, and we kid ourselves if we think of God as a rag-bag of tricks” (‘Love Songs in a Zipless World’).