My grandson's response took me back vividly to my high school days and my high school's rivals. Any Freshman or other new girl coming to Sacred Heart Academy was anxious to find out who she was supposed to "be" so she could bond with other girls there already. A big part of our forming our Sacred Heart Academy identity was not only in learning the ways we girls were alike but also the ways in which we were NOT like Holy Angels girls, the ways in which we were "us" and "not like them." Our unity became especially strong at sports games when we sat in the bleachers, our own special "tribe," and chanted cheers against our rivals, who for the duration of a few hours became our "enemies."
Sociologists tell us that group identity is formed the most by deciding who is "inside" and who is "outside" our group, by emphasizing differences, attitudes which lead often enough to feelings of superiority, snobbery, even attitudes that make the outsiders scapegoats for anything "bad" that happens to the "in" group. It is easy enough for those who are "outside" our group to morph into our enemies. Sadly enough, unity is often created by human beings ganging up against the "other," their enemies. In schools this happens when the "different" or unpopular student is bullied by a group which has formed its identity around violence against "outsiders."
Yet when Peter the Apostle defied the law of the first group of Jewish Christians and entered the home of a gentile, the Roman centurion Cornelius, he brought with him the message that Jesus had come to break down all barriers between peoples and to empower us to discover our identity through our original oneness in God. Jesus himself became the "repulsive" one, the rejected one, the scapegoat, taking all the anger of the "in" group upon himself once - for all - so that we would never have to reject others again. Peter said to Cornelius and his family, this group of people who were "God-fearers," half insiders and half outsiders, definitely considered "second class" -
"but God has shown me that I should not call any human common or unclean.....Truly I perceive that God shows no partiality, but in every nation any one who fears Him and does what is right is acceptable to Him....And we are witnesses to all that Jesus did both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree. But God raised him up on the third day and made him manifest...To Jesus all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name."
To say that "Jesus died on a tree" is to invoke the language of Deuteronomy: one who is hanged on a tree dies under a curse from God. What a life-changing shift this is! "The shamed one, the cursed one, is in fact the source of honor and forgiveness." (James Alison, in "Jesus: the Forgiving Victim."
While Peter is speaking, God shows His initiative: the Holy Spirit falls on all who are hearing these words. Peter and those who came with him are amazed; they are being asked to cross a huge boundary. They realize that these Gentiles should be baptized. "This is not what they had expected. They could imagine, perhaps, in their generosity, extending courtesy to these second-class citizens; but what was happening was not dependent on their generosity, their superiority, or their initiative. In fact they are discovering that they are now equal insiders with the formerly semi-shameful other, the initiative not belonging to either of them." (Alison)
"but God has shown me that I should not call any human common or unclean..." This experience of Peter with the Gentiles has universal significance. Look at what happens when God takes the initiative to open up two groups, insiders and outsiders, - any two groups - to the reality of the possibility of re - unity. It is a unity of groups that are both alike and different.
So often, we think that when an "outsider" becomes an "insider" that the insider, speaking from his firm identity, says 'I'm such a kind, generous person that I can let you in, and you will become like me.' That would be easy. But what Peter is discovering, is that in fact, the act of someone being found to be an insider alongside you, on terms not dictated by you, means that you are never going to be you again. You are going to find yourself becoming someone entirely different to who you thought you were. A new 'we' is being created. And neither party yet knows what it is going to be like to be this new 'we', what goodness and security is going to look like..
"This is deeply disturbing to someone with firm boundaries...All over the world, this is the experience of host nations with growing immigrant populations. They cease to be what they thought they were, and after much painful tension they come to rejoice in who they are beginning to become." (Alison)
How often do Anglo parishioners grow angry when suddenly a Mass in Spanish or Vietnamese becomes part of the weekly Mass schedule? These new people are Catholics, Americans - the misperception is that they must "become like me" for unity to happen. There is pain because suddenly the parish seems to be undergoing a loss of identity. It's destabilizing, it feels like a loss. But it is the growth pangs of being given a new identity, of becoming who we really are when the "my people" and the "not my people" become equal, universally human yet different, in our eyes and hearts. Seeing that the often-repulsive other is the one who makes it possible for me to become who I really am is only possible when we are transformed by the repulsive-other who is Jesus, who gathers together people of every tribe, language, and nation.
The word "Catholic" means "universal." If we are one in Jesus, there are no "identity politics. "There is no group, or nation, ethnicity, gender, or any other identity that we typically create (slave or free, Jew or Greek, male and female, black or white, straight or gay and so on) that is in principle not able to be brought into the gathering, the ekklesia, the new people of God." (Alison)
The word "Catholic" also stretches beyond Catholic and Christian to embrace believers of non-Christianl faiths as being loved by God.
"In Vatican II's 'Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions,' the Church affirms that the three Abrahamic faiths - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - all worship the same God. But...this teaching is still not fully understood or accepted by all believers.
"...St. John Paul II reiterated Catholic teaching about the three monotheistic faiths worshiping the same God in a 1985 speech to Muslim youth in Morocco. He said then, 'We believe in the same God, the one God, the living God, the God who created the world..'" ("Interfaith Relations," by Michael O'Loughlin, in "America" magazine, October 3, 2016.)
Reaching out to know the "outsider" brings truth to our hearts. Muslims do NOT worship Muhammad. They worship the one God. They believe that Jesus is a revered prophet and hold Mary in high regard as his virgin mother.
What do we believe about Heaven? James Alison offers us this provocative - and challenging - picture of what Heaven will be like:
"When I've asked people how they imagine heaven, apart from the usual stuff about harps and clouds, they tend to talk about it being a place where there are lots of the sort of people they loved when they were alive. Lots of people 'like us.' I wonder! I wonder whether that wouldn't be just too boring. I wonder whether part of the sheer excitement and dynamism of heaven, a dynamism which starts here, doesn't consist in finding that even the deep, contented delighting in a beloved spouse or child is enriched by the zest which flows from discovering equality of heart with all those repugnant others over against whom I might have remained stuck in my smallness, those of whom I was frightened or disapproved. A universe of others that becomes vastly more fun and varied as I am able to let go of the terrifying narrowness of what I thought was goodness, and turns out merely to have been a well-disguised amalgam of defensive snobbery.
"The phrase 'This day you will be with me in Paradise' was first spoken to, was first heard by, a thief on a gibbet thrown up on a city dump. How many of us have even begun to be able to imagine what it is like to find the company of such a person forever delightful?"