Schools of Solidarity

Nearly ten years ago now, my wife and I attended the 2015 World Meeting of Families conference in Philadelphia. Helen Alvaré gave one of the keynote talks during that week that has stuck with me, and feels relevant in this particular moment.

Alvaré was talking about how the love we give and receive within the family grows and overflows into the wider world. Specifically, she spoke on how a parent’s unconditional love for their child “organically and divinely” grows into the unconditional love of strangers. She said:

“Eventually, if you have asked God day in and day out to work His will with you, you begin to see every child as if they could be your child…You won’t be able to look at the homeless, the sick, the depressed, the fatherless, without remembering how they are someone’s child or sibling or mother and then converting that co-suffering, maternal and paternal selves into action.”

In other words, the virtue of solidarity is fostered within the family. By loving my own family and suffering with them I can learn to love and truly recognize the suffering of strangers.

When I heard this, I immediately understood what she was talking about. Just a few weeks before this conference started, there was a picture of a little boy circulating online. You’ve probably seen it before. The boy was three years old in this picture, just a little older than my eldest son at the time. In the picture he was lying down with his knees tucked under him, his arms off to his sides, and his head full of light brown hair turned sideways. Just like how my son would sleep in his toddler bed.

Except this little boy wasn’t sleeping in this picture, he was lying on a Mediterranean beach after drowning in the Aegean Sea. His name is Aylan Kurdi, and his family were refugees fleeing Syria in a crowded inflatable raft.

I remember staring at this picture when it came across my newsfeed. This little boy reminded me so much of my son. I realized at that moment that he was loved by somebody as much as I love my own son. He smiled and laughed and cried and played like my own son. But Aylan drowned in the Aegean Sea, along with his brother and mother, because his dad wasn’t able to hold onto them as during a storm. When I first saw the picture I sat in front of my computer and cried.

As Christians, we are commanded and empowered to see Christ in others, especially in the poor, the hungry, and the refugee because Christ explicitly identified himself with the “least of these.”

I often fail at this commandment. Sometimes empathy is difficult to muster. But God continues to teach me and form me to see thing as he does, “with his own eyes” (Lumen Fidei 18). And he has formed me through my family.

My youngest was born just two years ago. When I first saw him in the hospital, seconds after his birth, I loved him. My heart opened up and I just loved him. I didn’t really have a choice in the matter. His mere presence captured me, imposed on me. I didn't have the ability to do otherwise.

This has been my experience with all my children, and, slowly, it has allowed me to see the dignity of every child. My family is the school where God has taught me solidarity.

As a Christian, I must resist looking at the poor, the homeless, and the immigrant as an abstract “other” or “issue.” I must see every person as the unique and infinitely valuable individual that they are. I must see and love the migrant as I would see my own family.

As Professor Alvaré put it, “We start with family and end with strangers…whose only link is our common humanity.”

May God continue that work of transformation in me.