The Word Of Peace
Homiletic Reflections On Peacemaking

Deacon Robert M. Pallotti

30th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle A

With the rapid capitulation of France to the Nazi onslaught in 1940, a separate part of France was put under the control of French Gen. Petain. This was known as Vichy France. Petain collaborated with the German Nazis in administering that part of France. He advanced the anti-Jewish campaign and persecution of the Nazi SS by helping to find and export Jews to the death camps in Germany and Poland.

In a small area of Vichy France, known as Le Chambon, Hugenot Protestants, led by Pastor Andre Trocme' refused to cooperate with Petain and the Nazis. Rather than turn Jews over to the SS they hid them ! Many of those that they hid from the SS were Jewish children. The motivating force behind their defiance of Hitler was their faith. They believed that the love of God and the love of neighbor must be demonstrated in action, and risky action at that ! It did not matter that the people they were hiding were different from themselves--they were the neighbor!

Jesus is asked a question to trip him up. A young lawyer wants to see if Jesus can be caught denying something essential about the Law of Moses so that a charge of blasphemy can be brought against Jesus. He asked Jesus which commandment of the law was most important at a time when there were 613 laws to observe in order to be a good observant Jew ! Jesus will not be fooled--he cuts to the heart of the whole law--Love God absolutely, and your neighbor as yourself ! The law and the prophets are all about this!

The biblical notion of neighbor simply refers to anyone other than oneself, especially the poor and vulnerable elements of society. We heard as much in the reading from Exodus. Love of neighbor is essential to faithfulness, to the covenantal relationship with God. This is so because of a central truth-- EACH PERSON IS CREATED IN THE IMAGE AND LIKENESS OF GOD AND MUST BE ATTENDED TO ! To honor and glorify God, we honor and glorify the sacred dignity of every person in concrete deeds. This was understood by the most unlikely hero for Israel, the Persian king Cyrus, through whom God was able to work to free Israel from the Babylonian Captivity.

This central truth is especially important during this campaign year. So often we hear," Are you better off than you were four years ago?"  Though this is a popular question in such a year, it is not the one we are compelled to ask as Jesus' followers. Rather, the question is "Are the least among us, our neighbors, better off ?" This may not get us elected, but it flows from the essential commitment in faith to Jesus Christ. In a time when the emphasis is placed on selfish interest, the idol of our time, such a question seems out of place--yet it wells up from the very core of our covenant with Jesus Christ. The call to compassion for the neighbor requires the promotion of the COMMON GOOD for all members of any family, community, organization and society. It is because in faith we recognize that the other, the neighbor has a claim on my concern. This has been repeated consistently by all the Popes of this century and the U.S. Catholic Bishops. It is also at the heart of our U.S. experiment in democracy!

Our love of God, while distinct from our love of neighbor is nevertheless, profoundly an interrelated enterprise. Why? Because God chose to make human beings a unique, and the highest expression of God's dwelling on the world! Therefore, we may not by pass the person, the neighbor on our journey to God! This is expressed most clearly in Exodus today. God hears the cry of the poor, the vulnerable and the forgotten, and remembers! God measures the virtue, the worthwhileness and the faithfulness of a society by how the most vulnerable are treated! When God hears, God feels the pain of human beings. God is compassionate and calls the people to this same response to the suffering of others. In doing so, they can address the pain of the world, the pain of the neighbor in our midst.

Throughout WW II the people of Le Chambon continued to hide Jewish children, sometimes whole families. Their love for the Jewish neighbor was not lost on the local Vichy officials or German soldiers. 

Their fundamental faith and decency became contagious among the most unlikely people--the German soldiers! These soldiers were aware that Jews were being hid by the people of Le Chambon, but refused to turn them in to the Gestapo. By the end of the war this small area of France was able to save over 5,000 Jewish lives. One of the woman who helped to house and feed Jewish children was asked how she had the courage to do such things in the midst of the Nazi terror. She responded, " we didn't see ourselves as courageous, we thought it was the Christian, the human thing to do. After all, they were our neighbors!"

Deacon Robert M. Pallotti, D. Min.
Uploaded January 14, 2000