Never without the other
Publish date 29-11-2024
A psalm in the Bible, 132/133, begins with a verse that can be very pleasing, opening horizons of hope, but also raising a series of questions. «How good and how pleasant it is when brothers live together!». In Sacred Scripture this idea is contradicted by many stories that do not speak of the beauty of being brothers or of living together, starting with that of Cain and Abel, continuing with Esau and Jacob or even with Joseph son of Jacob and his brothers, or with the man who says to Jesus: «Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me» – we know in fact what a source of quarrels and lawsuits inheritances are! – « «The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil» says St. Paul: in particular, as we often see, of the destruction of families, of communities, even religious ones. The Lord, however, gives us a magnificent example of fraternal life in the Acts of the Apostles: «The company of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things he possessed was his own, but they had everything in common». I can therefore draw a conclusion: fraternal life2024is born and exists, lasts and bears fruit when attachment to wealth is overcome and we free ourselves from every calculation that revolves around ourselves. The good news of the Gospel, which makes us discover that we are all brothers because we are children of the One Father, has its roots in that gesture which is “giving”, sharing, freeing one’s heart from greed. “There is more joy in giving than in receiving” Jesus said.
Even if it is a long and tiring journey, with many backtracks, true fraternal life, the one that Psalm 133 announced to us with enthusiasm, can exist only if pettiness of attachment to having is done away with. The Acts of the Apostles always make us understand this with the example of Ananias and Sapphira. It is not so much their sudden death that teaches us, but the meaning of that death. The pettiness of avarice and the false image of generosity that one wants to give cuts off fraternal life. The real death is that of not creating fraternity, not the fact of falling dead at Peter's feet and being taken away.
“Fraternal life” means loving, not simply living together; love is never closed in a circle, even if it is the natural family, religion, race, culture or nationality. For this reason there is no more demanding path that leads deeper into the heart of life than being truly brothers without borders.
The psalm ends by saying: «There the Lord gives the blessing and life forever». The Lord’s blessing means true life, peace, joy, fertility, the work of building the world according to the creator’s plan, which has not given a bloodsucking dominion of creation, much less of humanity. It’s certainly the opposite of the saying: mors tua vita mea, your death is my life, which seems to have supported and still supports the world, from the great world conflicts to small family disagreements. Instead, the title of Michel de Certeau’s book is right: Never without the other which speaks of the encounter and therefore of fraternal life. As we find in the preface to the Italian translation: «Communion through conflict, the life of man is never conceivable without the other: tragedy then is not the conflict, the otherness, the difference but rather the two extremes that deny this relationship: confusion (or fusion of personalities as in sects) and separation».
Cesare Falletti
NP August/September '24