By Gerrie Naughton, RSM

Solidarity with economically poor

This reflection is spurred by the words of a Fr. Denima Emmanuel of Nyala , Sudan . The only words that are actually his are in quotes. The rest of the reflection is my own sense of how he can utter those words.

I speak of solidarity as it might be in its most radical sense, in the sense that might truly bring about a true conversion in lifestyle and ministry of which our Direction Statement speaks. Solidarity might bring about the conversion of heart and mind that each one of us so desires. I speak of solidarity in its most radical form.

The question is can solidarity be anything other than radical. Solidarity is solidarity. There is no ‘in-between,' to me. If there is an ‘in-between' understanding, it is something other than solidarity.

The words of Father Denima Emmanuel, who works side by side with the most needy in Nyala , Sudan , teaches me the connection between solidarity and conversion. He says, very simply, “The closer we come to the poor, the better we understand God.” I think he can say this because he is beside the poor day in, day out, morning and evening.

He hears the sounds they hear all day and all nightlong. He smells the smells that they smell. He walks over the trash and glass ridden streets where they walk. He worries over the child that is gasping for breath and the old person who is crippled with pain. He feels their fears. Like them he sleeps with ‘one eye open' each night.

Because he is in and with the poor in all their circumstances, he does not even have time to go looking for God. While not even looking for God, a window pops up, and it is God. God was there all along. God is in every event, and Father Denima understands that God is within (in solidarity with) his reality just as he is in within (in solidarity with) that same reality.

God and he met constantly in solidarity with poor people. The Father does not have to spend time wondering what Lenten resolutions he has to make to come closer to God. God and he are meeting in each moment.

Spirituality becomes a thing of seeing. The eyes do not need to go to church for the holy hour to behold God. The loveliest and the ugliest situations become the monstrance. They hold God.

The Border Patrol car carrying away the ‘alien' family with whom he chatted yesterday, teaches about justice and inalienable human rights. Fr. Denima has only to walk as close as he can with the persons and realities that each day presents in order to realize that there is no distance between that reality and God. God is in the reality.

Fr. Denima and all around him are in God. God and the human reality are all totally one. They are all together in the heart of God, and the heart of God is all together in them. Solidarity is a daily walk together. In this walk, conversion and holiness are realized. Holiness is not something to strive for. Rather it is something to fall into. One does not have to go home to pray. Pray is what you do all day long.

For us, Sisters of Mercy, just as for any other person, solidarity will bring about a new understanding of God. Solidarity will help us to realize there is nothing to understand about God. There is only something to be lived into. All the intellectualizing and faith-crises will be over.

God will have become flesh. Therefore, trash, ugly ditches, potholes, ugly smells, lovely flowers, productive cacti, lovely people, bright-eyed children, and shots in the night will have new meaning. For all this to happen we must place ourselves in that poverty-rich reality.

We must smell its smells, fall over its trash, eat its food, savor its disorder, wash in its water, taste of its dust, pray in its substandard houses, take communion at its tables, give and receive pardon in its streets, be baptized into its ways, take anointing from its many treasured herbal teas and oils and even die and be buried in its very natural, uncultivated, unmanicured terrain. In this kind of solidarity our conversion becomes complete one step at a time.

( Gerrie Naughton, RSM, attended the recent Institute of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, which was held in Laredo .)