DO WE DARE TO SHARE?
The media informs us all the more rapidly each day of what’s happening in the world. We know more than ever the injustices, sufferings and abuses that are taking place daily around the world.
This information easily creates in us a certain feeling of solidarity with so many men and women, victims of a selfish and unjust world. It can even awaken a feeling of vague guilt. But at the same time, it fosters our feeling of powerlessness.
Our possibilities of acting are very slim. We all know about more suffering and injustices than we can solve with our own power. That’s why it’s hard to avoid a question deep down in our conscience in the face of a society that’s so inhuman: «What can we do?».
John the Baptist offers us an awful answer in the middle of his simplicity. A decisive answer that forces each one of us to face our own truth: «The one who has two tunics, share with the one who has none; and whoever has food, should do the same».
It’s not easy to hear these words without feeling a certain discomfort. We need courage to welcome them. We need time to let them sink into us. They’re words that cause suffering. Here ends our false ‘good will’. Here is revealed the truth of our solidarity. Here is dissolved our religious sentiment. What can we do? Simply share what we have with those who need it.
Many of our social and political discussions, many of our protests and shouting, that frequently dispense us of a more responsible action, end up reduced quickly to a very simple question. Do we dare to share what’s ours with those in need?
In an ingenious way, we almost always believe that our society would be more just and human when others change, and when the social and political structures that keep us from being more human are transformed.
And yet the simple words of the Baptist oblige us to think that the root of injustice is also in us. These structures reflect all too well the spirit that lives in almost all of us. These structures reproduce faithfully the ambition, selfishness and the thirst to possess that live within each one of us.
José Antonio Pagola
Translator: Fr. Jay VonHandorf
