WE ARE ONE BODY

 

WE ARE ONE BODY

A twenty-four-year-old French Catholic named Henri stopped a man on June 8 who was attacking children with a knife in a playground in the city of Annecy.  When he saw the attack unfolding he ran towards the offender and hit him with his backpack.  It was caught on video by bystanders.  He explained to reporters that he was in Annecy on a nine-month pilgrimage to visit all of France’s cathedrals on foot.  Thanks be to God, no one was killed, but two men over 70 years old and four children 3 years old and younger were seriously injured and hospitalized.  Henri, who did not give his last name, said he simply did what any other Frenchman would have done.  He was joined by a city employee who had a shovel and helped him drive away the attacker.  The press credited him for putting his life in danger to save the children, and he was among those thanked by President Macron, who visited the victims in the hospital.

When I first read the report, before getting far into the article, I thought to myself that the attacker probably has a Muslim name.  He has been arrested, and it turns out that I was right.  An immigrant from Syria.  However, I felt a twinge of conscience.  Was I wrong to assume that it was a Muslim who was the perpetrator?  There have been many attacks on civilians by Muslim extremists in Europe, Africa and the Middle East.  But there are other sources of violence, and I would not want the evil acts of a minority to color my view of people who belong to the same race or religion as the perpetrators. 

Archbishop Nelson Pérez issued on the feast of Corpus Christi a Pastoral Letter on Racial Healing: “We Are One Body.”  In the letter the archbishop calls all of us to an examination of conscience and to act against unjust prejudice in ourselves and our society.  He notes that “Racism denies our divine worth and violates the essence of our faith. It not only breaks Christ’s commandment to love others as He loves us, but also is an offense to the presence of God within each of us.”  The Archbishop reminds us that Christianity is about love, and love cannot exist where people are excluded or disadvantaged because of their race, color, condition of life, or religion.  We need to undercut racist attitudes by our personal prayer.  “To combat racism, we must embark on a journey of conversion that will require prayerful reflection, unflinching examination of conscience, and a commitment to unlearning conscious and unconscious biases that may have taken root in each of us.”

The archbishop does not mention this in his letter, but I think the forms of racism have expanded in the last decade.  Traditionally, racism was directed against African Americans and Hispanics.  Today, we see it in some places affecting persons of Asian descent, and sometimes it is directed against people in our midst who have a thick accent or cannot speak English.  There has also been a rhetoric of accusations by the progressive elite against all white people, as if a person is racist simply because he or she is white.  Such a broad accusation against an entire race of people is always false and evil, whether it is aimed at Blacks, Hispanics, Whites or Asians.

Racism is anti-human and should not be accepted in any society.  But it is particularly abhorrent to Christians, who believe that every human being was created in the image and likeness of God, and that Christ came into the world to save all people.  St. Paul teaches us in his letter to the Galatians, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male or female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Before God, we are all equal and share a common dignity.  Our salvation depends on loving our brother and sister in Christ, whatever their origin, race, or language.  “Whoever says he is in the light, yet hates his brother, is still in the darkness.  Whoever loves his brother remains in the light, and there is nothing in him to cause a fall” (1 John 2:9-10).  Archbishop Pérez’s pastoral letter can be found on the Archdiocesan website, at www.archphila.org.  Just click on “statements” under his picture.