January 15, 2017
The remarkable film “I, Daniel Blake” tells the story of a hardworking carpenter who after a heart attack is no longer able to work. The attempt to get his social welfare benefits proves to be an endless heart-renting battle against a merciless bureaucracy. Only a second heart attack saves this kind, honest man from ending up on the street. Since I saw that film I look at the homeless with different eyes, realising that I too, with a bit of bad luck, could be one of them. Even more precarious than people who lose their job and fall through the social net are migrants and refugees who lose all they have and find themselves in a foreign country trying to find their way in a foreign culture among often hostile or indifferent neighbours. The hardest hit among them are the children. In his message for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees, Pope Francis appeals to us to be especially concerned about refugee children who often are not only traumatised but also abused and exploited. The coming of a million refugees and migrants in 2015 has caused a social and political earthquake. Many Germans have responded with great generosity and openness. But there is an increasing part of the population that reacts with fear and even hatred to the foreigner. What causes that fear which we might feel ourselves at times? I think that there are two reasons. The images of endless streams of men, women and children walking along roads and railway lines or reaching our shores in make-shift rubber boats gives the impression that they will keep coming for ever. You get the feeling of being drowned by these unending waves of human beings. The other reason is the realisation that most of them are Muslims and while most of them are peaceful persons who simply seek security and a place to live in peace, there is an increasing upsurge of young Muslims who interpret the Koran as a mandate to conquer the world and eliminate all other religions and cultures. Both fears are real, even if sometimes they are exaggerated. The crucial question is how we react to them. There are two levels of action to be taken. One is political. The challenge is to strike a balance between the legitimate need to maintain security and public order and the duty of the state to protect its citizens on one side, and our human and Christian duty to assist people in need and respect their rights. We can only pray for our politicians for the wisdom to maintain that delicate balance. If we lose it, we risk to lose our humanity and become a selfish, a hard-hearted people and to destroy the core values on which our open, democratic society is built. At a personal level the great challenge is to overcome our innate fear of strangers, to reach out to them and to listen to their story. As I experienced watching the film about Daniel Blake and changing my view about homeless people, it is by meeting refugees and listening to their story that we realise that they are human beings like ourselves. If we should allow our hearts to be poisoned by fear and hatred, we betray the central message of the Gospel, and find in the end that there is in our hearts no more room neither for our neighbour in need nor for God.
Fr Wolfgang Schonecke, MAfr