In the technological age we live in, password is a term we frequently use. In fact, technologically speaking, a password is none other than a secret word, or a group of characters, that enable the user to prove his/her identity. The password is the sole guarantee by which the user can successfully be admitted to a resource that is otherwise kept secret from those who have no permission to access it at all.
Everyone under the sun is looking for happiness and, most of all, peace of heart and mind. Obviously, the new year presents itself to all people of good will as a sterling opportunity for such an endeavour to be pursued and ultimately achieved.
In his first message for the World Day of Peace, celebrated on January 1, Pope Francis offers to the world the value of fraternity as the hinge upon which world peace can rely. As a matter of fact, he titles his message: ‘Fraternity – the foundation and pathway to peace.’
What does the Holy Father mean by fraternity? At the beginning of his message the Argentinean Pontiff gave a splendid catechises on what fraternity is all about. “Fraternity is an essential human quality, for we are relational beings. A lively awareness of our relatedness helps us to look upon and to treat each person as a true sister or brother; without fraternity it is impossible to build a just society and a solid and lasting peace.”
The first locus wherein fraternity should be learned is the family.
This is surely the basic cell not only of society but also the first school at which its members are taught, through words and deeds, essential values like justice, peace, collaboration and solidarity that make up the social fabric of every society.
“We should remember that fraternity is generally first learned in the family, thanks above all to the responsible and complementary roles of each of its members, particularly the father and the mother. The family is the wellspring of all fraternity, and as such it is the foundation and the first pathway to peace, since, by its vocation, it is meant to spread its love to the world around it.”
The family is the wellspring of all fraternity
Thus, the family helps us to overcome the unbridled individualism, geocentricism and materialistic consumerism which tragically hinder us from treating each other as real brothers and sisters, children of the same Father in Heaven.
Some may object to this point by saying that they have no faith in God. While their position can be understood, there is still the inescapable reality that our very common humanity substantially connects us with each other, thus forging among us those fraternal relationships without which we cease to be human beings.
Consequently, fraternity becomes the bread and butter of the right attitude in international relations. In his encyclical Populorum Progressio, Paul Paul VI said that “in this mutual understanding and friendship, in this sacred communion, we must also… work together to build the common future of the human race”.
Fraternity impels us to seek various ways of promoting the duty of solidarity, social justice and universal charity. The year 2014 must be a year wherein all of us should be guided by the virtue of solidarity. In other words, as Blessed John Paul II appropriately described in his encyclical on solidarity, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, that “firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good”.
In practice “solidarity helps us to see the ‘other’ – whether a person, people or nation – not just as some kind of instrument, with a work capacity and physical strength to be exploited at low cost and then discarded when no longer useful, but as our ‘neighbour,’ a ‘helper’ (cf. Gen 2:18-20), to be made a sharer, on a par with ourselves, in the banquet of life to which all are equally invited by God”.
Are we ready to allow other people accessing God’s merciful love for them by being a genuine brother and sister to them? Is the human and spiritual value of fraternity going to be our motivating force, the password for a flourishing living throughout 2014 both for us and others?