The Church of Mercy (10 page)

When we say “home,” we mean a place of hospitality, a dwelling, a pleasant human environment where one stays readily, finds oneself, feels inserted into a territory, a community. Yet more profoundly,
home
is a word with a typically familiar flavor, which recalls warmth, affection, and the love that can be felt in a family. Hence the home represents the most precious human treasures: encounter, relations among people who are different in age, culture, and history, but who live together and help one another to grow. For this reason, the home is a crucial place in life, where life grows and can be fulfilled, because it is a place in which every person learns to receive love and to give love. This is “home.” And this is what
this
home has tried to be for twenty-five years! On the border between the Vatican and Italy, it is a strong appeal to us all—to the Church, to the city of Rome—to be more and more of a family, a “home” open to hospitality, care, and brotherhood.

There is then a second very important word:
gift
, which qualifies this home and describes its typical identity. It is a home, in fact, that is characterized by gift, by mutual gift. What do I mean? I wish to say that this home gives hospitality—material and spiritual sustenance to you, dear guests, who have come from different parts of the world. But you are also a gift for this home and for the Church. You tell us that to love God and neighbor is not something abstract, but profoundly concrete: it means seeing in every person the face of the Lord to be served, and to serve him concretely. And you are, dear brothers and sisters, the face of Jesus. Thank you! To all those who work in this place, you give the possibility to serve Jesus in those who are in difficulty, who are in need of help.

This home, then, is a luminous transparency of the charity of God, who is a good and merciful Father to all. Open hospitality is lived here, without distinctions of nationality or religion, according to the teaching of Jesus: “You received without pay, give without pay” (Matt. 10:8). We must recover the whole sense of gift, of gratuitousness, of solidarity. Rampant capitalism has taught the logic of profit at all costs, of giving to get, of exploitation without looking at the person . . . and we see the results in the crisis we are experiencing! This home is a place that teaches charity; it is a “school” of charity, which instructs me to go and encounter every person, not for profit, but for love.

The Church is mother, and her motherly attention is expressed with special tenderness and closeness to those who are obliged to flee their own country and exist between rootlessness and integration. This tension destroys people. Christian compassion—this “suffering with” compassion—is expressed first of all in the commitment to obtain knowledge of the events that force people to leave their homeland, and where necessary, to give voice to those who cannot manage to make their cry of distress and oppression heard. By doing this you also carry out an important task in sensitizing Christian communities to the multitudes of their brothers and sisters scarred by wounds that mark their existence: violence, abuse, the distance from family love, traumatic events, flight from home, and uncertainty about the future in refugee camps. These are all dehumanizing elements and must spur every Christian and the whole community to practical concern.

Today, however, dear friends, I would like to ask you all to see a ray of hope as well in the eyes and hearts of refugees and of those who have been forcibly displaced—a hope that is expressed in expectations for the future, in the desire for friendship, in the wish to participate in the host society through learning the language, access to employment, and the education of children. I admire the courage of those who hope to be able gradually to resume a normal life, waiting for joy and love to return to brighten their existence. We can and must all nourish this hope!

Above all I ask leaders and legislators and the entire international community to confront the reality of those who have been displaced by force, with effective projects and new approaches in order to protect their dignity, to improve the quality of their life, and to face the challenges that are emerging from modern forms of persecution, oppression, and slavery. They are human people—I stress this—who are appealing for solidarity and assistance, who need urgent action but, also and above all, understanding and kindness. God is good; let us imitate God.

[The condition of displaced peoples] cannot leave us indifferent. Moreover, as Church, we should remember that in tending the wounds of refugees, evacuees, and the victims of trafficking, we are putting into practice the commandment of love that Jesus bequeathed to us when he identified with the foreigner, with those who are suffering, with all the innocent victims of violence and exploitation. We should reread more often chapter 25 of the Gospel according to Matthew in which he speaks of the Last Judgment (see Matt. 25:31–46).

And here I would also like to remind you of the attention that every pastor and Christian community must pay to the journey of faith of Christian refugees and Christians uprooted from their situations by force, as well as of Christian emigrants. These people need special pastoral care that respects their traditions and accompanies them to harmonious integration into the ecclesial situations in which they find themselves. May our Christian communities really be places of hospitality, listening, and communion!

What does serving mean? It means giving an attentive welcome to a person who arrives. It means bending over those in need and stretching out a hand to them, without calculation, without fear, but with tenderness and understanding, just as Jesus knelt to wash the apostles’ feet. Serving means working beside the neediest of people, establishing with them first and foremost human relationships of closeness and bonds of solidarity.
Solidarity
, this word that frightens the developed world. People try to avoid saying it.
Solidarity
to them is almost a bad word. But it is our word! Serving means recognizing and accepting requests for justice and hope, and seeking roads together, real paths that lead to liberation.

The poor are also the privileged teachers of our knowledge of God; their frailty and simplicity unmask our selfishness, our false security, and our claim to be self-sufficient. The poor guide us to experience God’s closeness and tenderness, to receive his love in our life, his mercy as the Father who cares for us, for all of us, with discretion and patient trust.

From this place of welcome, encounter, and service, I would therefore like to launch a question to everyone, to all the people who live here, in this Diocese of Rome: Ask yourself, Do I bend down over someone in difficulty, or am I afraid of getting my hands dirty? Am I closed in on myself and my possessions, or am I aware of those in need of help? Do I serve only myself, or am I able to serve others, like Christ who came to serve even to the point of giving up his life? Do I look in the eye those who are asking for justice, or do I turn my gaze aside to avoid looking them in the eye?

A second word:
accompanying
. In recent years the Astalli Centre has progressed. At the outset it offered services of basic hospitality: a soup kitchen, a place to sleep, legal assistance. It then learned to accompany people in their search for a job and to fit into society. Then it also proposed cultural activities so as to contribute to increasing a culture of acceptance, a culture of encounter and of solidarity, starting with the safeguard of human rights.

Accompanying on its own is not enough. It is not enough to offer someone a sandwich unless it is accompanied by the possibility of learning how to stand on one’s own two feet. Charity that leaves the poor person as he or she is, is not sufficient. True mercy, the mercy God gives to us and teaches us, demands justice; it demands that the poor find the way to be poor no longer. It asks—and it asks us, the Church, us, the city of Rome, it asks the institutions—to ensure that no one ever again stand in need of a soup kitchen, of makeshift lodgings, of a service of legal assistance in order to have their legitimate right recognized to live and to work, to be fully a person. Adam said, “It is our duty as refugees to do our best to be integrated in Italy.” And this is a right: integration! And Carol said, “Syrians in Europe feel the great responsibility not to be a burden. We want to feel we are an active part of a new society.” This is a right too! So this responsibility is the ethical basis, it is the power to build together. I wonder: do we accompany people in this process?

The third word:
defending
. Serving and accompanying also means defending; it means taking the side of the weakest. How often do we raise our voice to defend our own rights, but how often we are indifferent to the rights of others! How many times we don’t know or don’t want to give voice to the voice of those—like you—who have suffered and are suffering, of those who have seen their own rights trampled upon, of those who have experienced so much violence that it has even stifled their desire to have justice done!

It is important for the whole Church that welcoming the poor and promoting justice not be entrusted solely to “experts” but become a focus of all pastoral care, of the formation of future priests and religious, and of the ordinary work of all parishes, movements, and ecclesial groups. In particular—this is important and I say it from my heart—I would also like to ask religious institutes to interpret seriously and with responsibility this sign of the times. The Lord calls us to live with greater courage, generosity, and hospitality in communities, in houses, and in empty convents. Dear men and women religious, your empty convents are not useful to the Church if they are turned into hotels that earn money. The empty convents do not belong to you; they are for the flesh of Christ, which is what refugees are. The Lord calls us to live with greater courage and generosity, and to accept them in communities, houses, and empty convents. This of course is not something simple; it requires a criterion and responsibility, but also courage. We do a great deal, but perhaps we are called to do more, firmly accepting and sharing with those whom Providence has given us to serve.

Isn’t the world we want a world of harmony and peace—in ourselves, in our relations with others, in families, in cities,
in
and
between
nations? And does not true freedom mean choosing ways in this world that lead to the good of all and are guided by love?

But then we wonder: is this the world in which we are living? Creation retains its beauty, which fills us with awe, and it remains a good work. But there is also “violence, division, disagreement, war.” This occurs when human beings, the summit of creation, stop contemplating beauty and goodness, and withdraw into their own selfishness.

When we think only of ourselves and our own interests and place ourselves in the center, when we permit ourselves to be captivated by the idols of dominion and power, when we put ourselves in God’s place, then all relationships are broken and everything is ruined; then the door opens to violence, indifference, and conflict. This is precisely what the passage in the book of Genesis seeks to teach us in the story of the Fall: the man enters into conflict with himself, he realizes that he is naked, and he hides himself because he is afraid (see Gen. 3:10). He is afraid of God’s glance; he accuses the woman, she who is flesh of his flesh (see Gen. 3:12); he breaks harmony with creation, and he begins to raise his hand against his brother to kill him. Can we say that from harmony he passes to “disharmony”? No, there is no such thing as disharmony; there is either harmony or we fall into chaos, where there is violence, argument, conflict, fear . . .

It is exactly in this chaos that God asks the man’s conscience, “Where is Abel your brother?” and Cain responds, “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?” (Gen. 4:9). We too are asked this question; it would be good for us to ask ourselves as well: am I really my brother’s keeper? Yes, you are your brother’s keeper! To be human means to care for one another! But when harmony is broken, a metamorphosis occurs: the brother who is to be cared for and loved becomes an adversary to fight and kill. What violence occurs at that moment, how many conflicts, how many wars have marked our history! We need only look at the suffering of so many brothers and sisters. This is not a question of coincidence, but the truth: we bring about the rebirth of Cain in every act of violence and in every war. All of us!

And even today we continue this history of conflict between people, even today we raise our hands against our brother or sister. Even today we let ourselves be guided by idols, by selfishness, by our own interests, and this attitude persists. We have perfected our weapons, our conscience has fallen asleep, and we have sharpened our ideas to justify ourselves. As if it were normal, we continue to sow destruction, pain, death! Violence and war lead only to death; they speak of death! Violence and war are the language of death!