Like a garden

There are moments in history in which, to regenerate it, it is necessary to choose new words. About 10 years ago the term "environment", for example, in its declinations - ecological transition, new development model, sustainability... - was able to modify the public agendas of companies and governments.

In recent times another word has been laboriously emerging: brotherhood. The credit goes to Pope Francis who on 3 October 2020 signed an encyclical, Fratelli tutti, to bring the meaning of this word to the center of the debate.
No ambitions, indeed. Recent times teach us how the self is not enough in itself: it is always the "we" that opens the doors to opportunities for redemption in society. It is a great challenge that requires a new social alliance capable of overturning models that have lost their humanity. It applies to all areas, from business to the third sector, from politics and associations.
The Italian Constitution itself was born from a "gift" of brotherhood: the political cultures of the time decided to take a step back from their own partisan interests and take two steps forward together to promote human dignity. Pope Francis has relaunched "fraternity" as a new anthropological paradigm on which to reconstruct gestures and laws because "fraternity has something positive to offer to freedom and equality" (Fratelli tutti, 103).

The challenge is difficult: the book of Genesis tells us that brotherhood is betrayed by fights between brothers. In the Torah itself there is no fraternal relationship that is not conflictual, as if to underline that brotherhood is the fruit of a maturation process that passes through the recomposition of what has been broken. The stories of Isaac and Ishmael, Esau and Jacob, Jacob and Laban, Joseph and his brothers and so on are well known. Cain's gesture is the archetype, it is violence against those of his own blood, not against the foreigner. In human relationships, jealousy destroys brotherhood.
Then, when brotherhood does not find space in cultures, the other becomes a danger and an enemy to be destroyed.
Fraternity is reborn only «from men and women who make the fragility of others their own, who do not allow a society of exclusion to be built, but become neighbors and raise up and rehabilitate the fallen man, so that the good may be common» (Fratelli tutti, 67 ). Fraternity goes beyond cultures and belongings. It's a big challenge.
Fraternity, David Sassoli said when he spoke about Europe, is like the act of cultivating a garden. In the Bible, from the book of Genesis to the Apocalypse, the garden is a space where nature meets culture and the freedom of men and women. The term “gan” refers to an enclosed space while the Greek translates “garden” with paraidos which refers to the term pardes, harmony.

The garden is first and foremost a microcosm of harmony, it is so "in the beginning" of creation and at the origin of all life, it will be so "in the end" thanks to Jesus' promise "you will be with me in paradise" [in the garden of life].
Thus, between the beginning and the end of his time, man is called to populate, irrigate, live, look after and feed on the fruits of the garden. The meaning of Eden refers to the place of delight, fertility and fun but also to the experience of separation from oneself, from others and from God: in Eden the life of a flower and an animal like that of a man can grow and sprout or wither or be trampled. The experience of the garden also includes separation and shame: after eating the fruit of knowledge, the man and woman hide behind the trees for fear of God. When God searches for Adam and asks him "Where are you?" he blames Eve instead of acknowledging her responsibility.
The garden can become a place of confusion and loneliness as when, in the olive garden, the kiss, instead of uniting, becomes a symbol of betrayal. For some it becomes the place where they fall asleep because they are unable to face reality, while for Jesus it is the condition for listening and abandoning oneself in silence to the will of the Father.

But there's more. Jesus is crucified in a place where "there was a garden" and there was a new tomb there. Even when he is resurrected he is mistaken for a gardener. It is in this new garden that the groom and the bride recognize and find each other and the Church celebrates the victory of Life over death.

In Gen 2:15 it is written that God planted a garden and placed man in it to cultivate and look after it. Man must cultivate it as a creature aware of limits and finitude, of the transience of time and of diminishing forces. In the garden man co-creates with God and is called to safeguard or recompose fractured relationships.
It is from here that brotherhood is reborn.

Francesco Occhetta
Focus
NP October 2023