We gather in prayer today and, as Pope Francis at the conclusion of his Oct. 18 audience said, “our thoughts turn to Palestine and Israel. The number of victims is rising and the situation in Gaza is desperate.” Certainly, the slaughter on Oct. 7 of over 1,400 Jews shocked the world. In addition to the situation in which nations seem poised to join this conflict, we are also aware of people in our own country and elsewhere who offer justification for this heinous act and who even call for further acts of terrorism.
Let us especially hold in our prayer the victims of violence and their loved ones, let us ask God to watch over the innocent who are held in captivity and let us pray for all those whose innocent lives are threatened because of their race or the place where they live. In the words again of Pope Francis we ask God to help all people join together “to take just one side in this conflict: that of peace.”
Today’s first reading from the Book of Genesis is a story that is probably familiar to all of us. It is the story of God confronting Cain after he has killed his brother, Abel. Cain apparently was never told that you don’t answer a question with a question, for to God’s question, “Where is your brother?” Cain responds, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” It is these two questions that I invite us to reflect upon for a moment.
Let us start with the first question: “Where is your brother?” and reflect specifically on the third word of that question: “your.” Grammatically it is a second person, possessive adjective. And while it may seem insignificant, it points to a very important reality—that Abel belonged to Cain and that he was part of him. God does not refer to Abel as “the other person who grew up in the home of Adam and Eve.” He doesn’t ask “where is the shepherd whose name is Abel and who lives nearby.” He does not even ask “where is “brother Abel.” He says instead “your” brother. The word points to something beyond the fact that they came from the same parents and are now adults. It points to the fact that they belonged to one another. In my first assignment as a priest, there was a wonderful Irish woman named Bridget who would prepare meals for the priests of the parish. She was married to Dan and they had three children. I will always remember how, whenever she would spoke of Dan, it would never just be “Dan” but she would always refer to Dan as “my Dan.” Dan in his own right was successful in his career and it was certainly not as though Bridget controlled Dan’s life, but Bridget knew that Dan was part of who she was like no one else. He belonged to her and she belonged to him.
And this brings us to the second question. It is Cain’s response to God’s question and it asks, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” In the very asking of the question, it is apparent that sin has blinded Cain to the reality of what saying “my brother” means. It means that Abel is part of who he is and that, yes, watching out for yourself includes watching out for him. Since he is part of you, you are very much his keeper.
A more technical word for this is solidarity. It is an important part of our identity as Christians. In a 1986 Encyclical on the social order of the world (Sollicitudo rei Socialis), St. John Paul II explained that solidarity was not “a feeling of vague compassion or shallow distress at the misfortunes of so many people …” It isn’t, in other words, feeling bad when we see a person who is holding a sign asking for money. Rather, he continued, it is “a firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good. That is to say the good of all and of each individual, because we are all responsible for all.” That final line says it all, does it not: We are all responsible for all.
“Where is your brother?” “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Two seemingly innocent questions point to the reality of who we have been created to be and how sin can blind us to this reality. May we ask our almighty God today, and in the days ahead, to help us and the world to see one another as our brothers and sisters. May we ask our God to help us to see how they are part of us and we are part of them.
We can sometimes look at those whose lives are devastated and think to ourselves that it only due to living in a certain country or being born into a specific family or society that I do not experience certain horrors and devastating events. It may lead us to think to ourselves: there but for the grace of God, go I. But while such a thought helps us appreciate how we’ve been blessed, the story of Cain and Abel and the solidarity of being our brother’s keeper tells us something far different. It tells us not that “there but for the grace of God go I,” but rather that “there by the grace of God go I.” In other words, that person who is hated and persecuted because of religion or race is a part of me. The story of Cain and Abel tells us that we are our brothers’ (or sisters’) keeper because they are part of us and we are part of them. May we pray for and act on behalf of all our brothers and sisters. May we be our brother’s and sister’s keepers.
