INTERRUPT THE NARRATIVE OF THE POWERFUL…
Chapter nº2
Do I remain silent in the face of what is unjust? What steps can I take to break the silence?
“Now interrupting the narrative of the powerful, fighting for justice can be lonely, exhausting work, but nothing compared to what the Palestinian people are going through. Telling uncomfortable truths may cause them to lose their livelihood, lose friends, you may lose your family.…
Jesus interrupted the narrative of the powerful, that discourse that tells us that there is nothing more to do, that utopia is dead, that this is how things are… that there will always be injustice, that everything is going to chaos, that the earth has already collapsed, that small gestures have no meaning. With his life, death and resurrection, he gestated another narrative, the narrative in which God weaves history and that hope germinates in the small, in the work of the ant, in patient listening, in educating with patience, in the projects of our communities, in the collective actions in our territories, in the constant fidelity of our elders, in the novelty of our young sisters, in inventing other paths in spite of our frailties.
How do we interrupt the narrative of the powerful? What is our alternative narrative?
“…but I want you to look at that sea of umbrellas, there are hundreds of people defending Palestine and defending what will eventually prove to be on the right side of history.”
Jesus placed himself on the right side of history, at the table of sinners and the poor, on the path of women and children, of migrants, of widows and the sick, of the impure and the excluded. Today it means for us to place ourselves among the most vulnerable, to give voice to the invisible and silenced peoples, to lose our energies in what is really meaningful and fruitful for the gestation of the new world dreamed by God “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was in prison, I was sick and you visited me, I was a migrant and you welcomed me” (Mt 25:35).
Are we on the right side of history?
No one is free until we are all free
Jesus forms a community of disciples and educates them with the threads of solidarity, compassion and empathy. We remember his self-giving every time we experience the Eucharist, every time we feel in communion with our humanity, he gives us his life so that we may all have life.
Jesus placed himself on the right side of history, at the table of sinners and the poor, on the path of women and children, of migrants, of widows and the sick, of the impure and the excluded. Today it means for us to place ourselves among the most vulnerable, to give voice to the invisible and silenced peoples, to lose our energies in what is really meaningful and fruitful for the gestation of the new world dreamed by God “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was in prison, I was sick and you visited me, I was a migrant and you welcomed me” (Mt 25:35).
The globalized and capitalist system in which we find ourselves has individual freedom as a priority, which means “every man for himself”, which results in the exclusion of the peoples of the South.
We are invited to work for peace, for the freedom of all peoples and persons, because nothing human can be alien to us, let us bet on the collective, let us conjugate the “we”, between all of us we can weave networks that sustain, support and accompany others in the search for abundant life.
The words of the priest who concelebrated the mass of religious profession of two young people from Congo in a neighborhood of Lurigancho in Lima made me reflect a lot, he said: “we Africans are family, wherever an African is, we are all with him or her” this communitarian look of the African people teaches us to leave the individualism that closes us, the feeling of family mobilizes us to shake all hands.
Inspired by Pope Francis, let us enjoy this challenging text by Fratelli Tutti.
We need a community that sustains us, that helps us and in which we help each other to look ahead. How important it is to dream together! […] Alone we run the risk of having mirages, in which you see what is not there; dreams are built together” Let us dream as a single humanity, as walkers of the same human flesh, as children of this same earth that shelters us all, each one with the richness of his faith or his convictions, each one with his own voice, all brothers. (F.T 8)
Do we feel we are a family of all human beings?
As communities we work so that others can live in fullness?
To you Palestinian sister…
Olive tree of your land
Memory of your ancestors
Your root united to its root
Its fruit, your hope
I embrace you sister
We weep with you
Your tears will fertilize the earth
May the dove return with her olive tree
May peace return to your people
May your people return to their home
May we not cease to cry out so much injustice
May your children not continue to die of hunger
May genocide cease once and for all.
Oh God, the powerful people of this world
do not want to stop the business of war
while your people bleed to death.
Please stop this inhumanity.
Sr. Jacqueline Sothers, MDR
Kirigueti Community, Peru.