One of the contemporary writers, James Baldwin, says that each one of us is an island unto himself, and the bridges that lead to other people have been destroyed by conflicts of race,sex, and self-interest.We live in a world that destroys all the bridges that ought to exist between men. Because we are threatened by others, by the problems of law and order, by mistrust of government officials, and afraid to walk the streets at night, we tear the bridges down and retreat behind our walls and the security of a locked gate..
We read of the problems of others--- the thousands who do not have enough to eat, who cannot educate their children, or plan for a better tomorrow. But we take love, which can be the only solution, and we quarantine it in a little room of selfishness.We hug it to our hearts content but never share it with those who are so hungry for it.
We share our love with our children and our friends and refuse it with those millions around us who need it just as much. The tragedy of our lives is the wall we build around our houses and the shards of glass we put on top of the wall. They are a symbol of the wall we have put around our hearts. "I am a rock," the Simon and the Garfunkel song says,"I am an island. I build walls that none may penetrate. "Yet, of all the commodities in the world is love is the only one that we lose when we keep it.
We know that every day children are dying of malnutrition that people live in the slums, that they cannot earn a decent day's pay. When we know this and do nothing about it, we only condemn ourselves to death. When love is quarantined, it withers away and dies. After a while, we find that there isn't any love left for ourselves.
Yet we persist in locking love up in a little room because of the individual ego and the social code--because of our own selfishness and because everybody else does it. If only we had the courage to embark on what Teilhard de Chardin calls "the great adventure of universal love" and ignore the raise eyebrows of our friends and neighbors!How often we fair because we are not sure of ourselves, or because we really do not know what goes on in the hearts of others.,If we had the courage to reach out first, how many are there who would join us?
There is a strange paradox in all of these. Although many others need us-- and some of them need us very badly-- we also need them, and some of us need them very badly. Those in need help us to grow to be more of a person ourselves. It is constantly recurring miracle of human existence that a man grows only when someone else need him, and he responds with all the power at his command.
Saint James says: "If one of the brothers or one of the sisters is in need of clothes and has not enough food to live on,and ont of you says to him:'I wish you well'. "Keep yourself warm and eat plenty.' without giving him these bare necessities of life, then what good is that?" We cannot say to ourselves that it is their fault if they are in need. That they ought to work harder and do something about it themselves. Nor can we say that the problems are too big for us to solve by ourselves. We have to rebuild the bridges.
Christ became man 2,000 years ago to build bridges-- between heaven and earth , and among men. In a rather starling statement, He identified Himself with all those in need." Whatever you do to the least of these,you do to Me." At the Last Judgment, what will Christ say? "You did not feed the hungry. You did not give drink to the thirsty. There was crime and injustice and you were afraid and you locked yourself away from it. You never talked with a person who was a poor or in need."
There is something we can do. We can build bridges. There is a gift that all of us can give, no matter how poor in money or in talent: hold out your hand and let your heart be in it.
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