Are we all neighbors?

We have some neighbors who live about six houses from us. They’re actually around the corner, but because of the way our backyards are shaped, whenever they have a gathering in their backyard – just about every Saturday and Sunday to watch football or have a party – we can hear their loud shouts, the music and more.

We’ve never met the folks who live there. We call them “the Noisy House.”

Pope Francis would not be happy about that.

In his new encyclical, “Fratelli Tutti: On Fraternity and Social Friendship,” the pope addresses the ways the world has been divided and how certain trends hinder the development of universal fraternity.

In the document, Pope Francis recounts the story of the Good Samaritan, which was Jesus’ response to the question, “Who is my neighbor?” Francis asks us to ponder which character in the story best represents us – the robbers, the injured man, the religious people who pass by without offering aid or the Samaritan who gives his all to help.

“We need to acknowledge that we are constantly tempted to ignore others, especially the weak,” the encyclical says. “Let us admit that, for all the progress we have made, we are still ‘illiterate’ when it comes to accompanying, caring for and supporting the most frail and vulnerable members of our developed societies. We have become accustomed to looking the other way, passing by, ignoring situations until they affect us directly” (FT 64).

In “Fratelli Tutti,” Pope Francis decries that people often hurry off without assisting when someone is attacked in our streets. “These are symptoms of an unhealthy society. A society that seeks prosperity but turns its back on suffering,” he writes (FT 67).

Our world was being polarized before the pandemic. Isolating ourselves in our homes for the last eight months has not helped. Are the debates between maskers and anti-maskers a cause of the divide or a symptom?

We chat with a few neighbors frequently on the street or on a front lawn, wearing our masks and staying at least six feet apart. It’s good to gather and share what’s going on in our lives. But we’re not gathering for any barbecues or parties as we normally would.

And my siblings – who mostly live in the Midwest – made the tough call that we won’t gather for Thanksgiving or Christmas. Our get-togethers draw about 30 to 40 people and last 10 to 12 hours. It’s not wise to spend that long with folks from at least a dozen different households, but I’m really going to miss being together, hugging, chatting and laughing.

My nine siblings and I have gotten together regularly via videoconference since March. In some ways, we are connecting everyone from across the country more often, but it’s not the same as face to face, and I have no idea when we will see our granddaughters in Arizona.

Admittedly, these are first-world problems. Noisy neighbors and not being able to travel for the holidays are disappointments and inconveniences, but in the grand scheme of things, they pale in comparison to the 40 million people across the world who have been infected with the coronavirus, with 1.2 million deaths (in the U.S. alone, 8.2 million cases and 220,000 deaths). The pope notes that a global pandemic “momentarily revived the sense that we are a global community.”

We are all brothers and sisters, but we don’t often act like it. Too many times, it’s us against them – national boundaries, races, political parties, etc.

“In today’s world,” Francis writes, “the sense of belonging to a single human family is fading, and the dream of working together for justice and peace seems an outdated utopia” (FT 30). The pope reminds us that isolation is not the way to restore hope and bring about renewal.

As we face more months of separation from neighbors and those we love, we must think about creative ways to stay connected to the rest of the human family beyond a video call or a driveway chat.

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