editorial" "
The phenomenon of immigration does not concern just a few European countries but the whole continent of Europe. Institutions, civil society and Christian Churches are faced with a responsibility for which there are no quick and easy solutions. The reflections and commitment of Christians are rooted in the Bible, to which the European Churches have dedicated this year. In the Bible, the gher is the foreigner who possesses no land in the country in which he lives. His is the typical figure of the migrant poor and rootless with no possibility of finding sustenance whom the people of Israel welcome, allowing him to utilise the resources of creation with them. The gher also takes part in the paschal Seder, the moment when God’s salvific gestures are most intensely evoked.The Bible (Deuteronomy) contains words which ought to shock those who feel themselves to be honourable European citizens, yet turn up their noses (and clutch their wallets) when faced with the foreigner, the stranger, those who are different, immigrants. “My father was a wandering Aramean, he came into Egypt and lived there as a stranger with few people; and there they became a great nation, strong and numerous”.To describe oneself as a migrant is not easy. To descend from one who had to abandon his homeland, the place where his strongest and most sacred bonds lay, brings to mind a figure dressed in rags, dirty, with marked features and a rough manner. And yet this is the father who, with his suffering, enabled his descendants to become great, strong and numerous. Perhaps this is what we fear: the invasion of our space, the sharing of our resources with the gher who have become strong and numerous.One source of purification is open to all humanity, if they emerge themselves in the pure water of the Word and dare to face those who today are “wandering Arameans”. The Word is a meeting place for all men with God and, in Hebrew tradition, presents many faces and tongues: 70 to be exact, where the number symbolises multiplicity and perfection. Must we, then, talk about contracts and forget the contract of faithfulness to the Word? Regulations exist and must exist, but they are only an expression of legal convention, a safeguard, not an expression of duty. Substantially, they emanate from, when they are not actually limited to, economic questions.The decadence of western thought has thus come to deny life, and the possibility of life, to man, in the name of the well-being and tranquillity of those who have forgotten the identity of their father, “a wandering Aramean”.This western definition must be overturned and a return made to the Jewish and Christian original, welcoming the revelation that characterises men and women, forms them as they reply, and leads to a specific awareness of our mission towards the Other and towards others, brothers and sisters, who are weak, in need, or, simply, “other” and nothing else. Adherence to goodness, its relationship to truth, the Torah as the Face of Christ emanating light, all these urge us on to meet the light of the other. Light, not colour of skin, slanting eyes or high cheekbones: all men and all women are light.Dealing and negotiating in the city of man in darkness, in the shadows, without the light of the Torah and the Face of Christ, is a tangible economic and political reality. It has yet to be proved that it is true and authentic. It could be a lie, a theft, a robbery committed under the mockery of a legality created to protect one exclusive point of view. And without even a glimmer of light. What light can there be in a face that accumulates resources and wealth while his brother does not even have the strength to reach out his hand? The Bible asks us, above all, not to be Jews or Christians, Europeans or gher, but saints, and saints are the answer of Light.
