Solidarnosc

IC XC
✙
NI KA

O King of the nations, and their desire,
the cornerstone making both one:
Come and save the human race,
which you fashioned from clay.

O Antiphon for 22 December

This one’s a day late – I’m always late for one or another of this series. Maybe some year I’ll prewrite the whole thing, but then I’d miss the ad hoc inspiration. I didn’t know that this year I’d be writing about Jews and Gentiles finding unity in Messiah until I started writing.

Within Catholic Social Teaching there is the virtue of Solidarity. This is not a vague warm fuzzy feeling, nor is it a sense of “We’re all in this together”. A better description is that a rising tide raises all ships. All humans fell in the death of Adam. All humanity is raised in the resurrection of Christ. In like manner, my sins do not just affect me – everyone is made the weaker thereby. And anyone’s virtue strengthens us all. What happens to one member of the human race happens to us all. Today’s antiphon speaks to this virtue, that it is the human race Christ came to save, not just one ethnicity or tribe, nor even “just everyone else but one ethnicity.” The Messiah recapitulates the whole history of humanity in himself, making “both one”. We are not at liberty to speak easily of those inside and outside Messiah. All are one in him – and until judgement day, that includes those who consider themselves outside – even they are not.

The social teaching insists that, despite human sinfulness, we need to be mindful of the way God gave the entirety of creation to all people and came to save all of us. “[Solidarity] is not a feeling of vague compassion or  shallow distress at the misfortunes of so many people, both near and far. On  the contrary, it is a firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to  the common good; that is to say, to the good of all and of each individual,  because we are all really responsible for all.” (St. John Paul II, On Social Concern [Sollicitudo rei Socialis], no. 38)

So Christmas comes at a time of war. Again. And it would seem that all over the world people are taking sides. I have feelings about the war. I’ve blogged them in an earlier post, but something else happened and it connects with what I’ve been writing about.

One of the two guys who teach me Hebrew is in the IDF, as I mentioned, but another is not. His sister lives here in SF and I think we might all possibly be friends if we’re ever in the same place at the same time. I always feel as if I’m the only person lighting a hanukkiah, not only in rural Georgia, but even here. I mentioned that I expected to see – especially now – more candles in more windows. And, apart from the Chabad one in Union Square, I’m just not seeing any at all. What I learned was that even in San Francisco, people are experiencing fear about doing so.

And I was very sad indeed.

It’s become very common place to joke about how “lefty” my City is, and to joke – also – about how exclusionary it is. In a city where people can walk naked on the sidewalk someone is afraid to light candles in the window. Many someones in San Francisco and elsewhere this year are feeling unsafe and thus unable to engage in this “quotidian exercise of religious freedom.”

So, solidarity. We have to actually do something for it to be an act of solidarity. I cannot fight a war, I cannot even work for peace at this remove. I honestly believe the violent protests asking for anything (on any side) are only street theatre. But I can enkidle a sign of hope. If there is one person that thinks, “if the guy in that window can do it, so can I…” then there is a blessing beyond just the light. Even though I’m not Jewish

The King of the Nations – that is the King of the Gentiles – is the King of Israel first. it’s not all of us lining up together, but – as Zechariah says, “Thus saith the LORD of hosts: In those days it shall come to pass, that ten men shall take hold, out of all the languages of the nations, shall even take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying: We will go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.’” In Messiah God came to make us one – to unite us to each other and to him – to go together to the house of the Lord. Gentiles follow our elder brothers in the faith of the God of Israel. We’re here to raise all the ships.