Reflections on the Poem Martín Fierro
In his Easter 2002 message to the educational communities in the city of Buenos Aires, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio gave a series of reflections about his homeland based on the epic poem Martín Fierro, written in the late nineteenth century by the Argentine José Hernández; they illustrate Bergoglio’s views on national affairs with singular acuity and ingenuity.
MARTÍN FIERRO, A “NATIONAL” POEM
“National identity” in a globalized world
It’s funny. Just the title of the book, even before I open it, suggests to me thought-provoking reasons for reflecting on the core components of our identity as a Nation. The Gaucho Martín Fierro—that was the title of the first edition. What do gauchos have to do with us? If we lived in the countryside, working with animals, or at least in rural villages, more in touch with the earth, it would be easier to understand. In our large cities, in Buenos Aires itself, many people will remember the horses on the carousels, or the livestock pens in the Mataderos Fair, as the closest they have ever come to riding a horse in their lives. And need I point out that more than 86 percent of Argentines live in large cities? For most of our young people and children, the world of Martín Fierro is more alien than even the futuristic scenarios of Japanese comics.
Of course, this has a lot to do with globalization. From Bangkok to São Paulo, from Buenos Aires to Los Angeles or Sydney, young people listen to the same music, children watch the same cartoons, families get their clothes, food, and entertainment at the same chain stores; products and trade flow back and forth across increasingly penetrable national frontiers; mass media and tourism make different ideas, religions, and lifestyles more familiar.
But globalization is an ambiguous reality. Many factors purport to be leading us toward a breakdown of the cultural barriers that formerly prevented recognition of the common dignity of human beings, and toward an acceptance of the diversity of conditions, races, sex, and culture. Never before has mankind had such an opportunity to create a multifaceted, caring global community. And yet the indifference that exists with regard to our increasing social imbalances, the unilateral imposition of values and customs on the part of certain cultures, the ecology crisis, and the exclusion of millions of human beings from the benefits of development leave this issue open to serious debate. In this context, the creation of a caring, fraternal human family remains a utopia.
Real growth in mankind’s conscience can only be founded on dialogue and love. Dialogue and love mean recognizing the differences of others, accepting diversity. Only then can we call it a true community: by not attempting to subject others to my criteria and priorities, by not “absorbing” others, but by recognizing them as valuable for what they are, and celebrating the diversity that is enriching for us all. Not to do so is narcissism, imperialism, plain foolishness.
This also applies in reverse: How can I maintain dialogue, how can I love, how can I build something if I let my potential input get diluted, lost, disappear? Globalization as a one-directional and uniformizing imposition of values, practices, and trade goes hand in hand with integration understood as being cultural, intellectual, and spiritual imitation and subordination. So we should be neither prophets of isolation, localist hermits in a global world, nor mindless and mimetic passengers trailing along in the caboose, admiring the fireworks of a World that belongs to others, all agape and applauding on cue. Different peoples, in joining the global dialogue, bring the values of their own culture and must defend them against any undue absorption or “laboratory synthesis” that might water them down into what is “the norm,” what is “global.” And—when they bring those values—they in turn receive the culture of other people, with the same respect and dignity.
Nor is there any room here for messy eclecticism, because then the values of a people become uprooted from the fertile soil that made them and sustains their being, and get mixed together as if in a junk shop, where “it’s all the same, not to worry . . . we’ll all end up ‘down there’ anyway.”
The Nation as the continuity of a common history
We can benefit from our “national poem” only if we realize that what it narrates has to do with us directly, here and now; not because we are gauchos or wear a poncho, but because the drama that its author, José Hernández, narrates is set in the actual history that brought us to where we are today. The men and women reflected in the story lived in this land, and their decisions, work, and ideals shaped the reality that we form part of today, that affects us directly today. It is that very “productivity,” those “effects,” that capacity to be set in the real dynamic of history, that makes Martín Fierro a “national poem.” Not the guitar, the malón (raid), and the payada (counterpoint singing).
And this is where an appeal to conscience is necessary. We Argentines have a dangerous tendency to think that everything begins today, to forget that you don’t get something for nothing, and that things don’t just drop from the sky. This in itself is a problem: unless we learn to recognize and accept the errors and successes of our past, which gave rise to the good and bad of the present, we will be condemned to repeat them over and over again forever, which—in fact—is not actually eternal, as the noose can only be stretched so far . . . But there is more: if we sever our links with the past, we’ll be doing the same with our future. We need to start looking at what is around us . . . and inside of us. Wasn’t there a negation of the future, a total lack of responsibility toward the future generations, in the flippancy with which the institutions, assets, and even the people of our country were treated?
One thing is certain: we are historical people. We live in time and space. Every generation needs its predecessors, and owes itself to its successors. And that, largely, is what being a Nation means: understanding ourselves as a continuation of the task of other men and women who already made their contribution, and as builders of a common area, a dwelling, for those who will follow us.
As “global” citizens, reading Martín Fierro can help bring us “down to earth” and curb this “globality” by acknowledging the struggles of the people who built our nationality, and making the journey as a nation our very own.
Being a nation means, above all, having an ethical attitude that springs from freedom
With the financial crisis, we are once again faced with this basic question: What is the underpinning of our so-called social ties? We say it so gravely at risk of being lost—but what exactly is it? What is it that “ties” me, that “binds” me to other people in a particular place, to the point where we share a common destiny?
Allow me to answer that: it is a matter of ethics. The basis of the connection between morality and social issues lies in that space (so elusive, by the way) in which man is a social being, a political animal, in the words of Aristotle and the classic republican tradition. It is man’s social nature that underpins the possibility of a contract between free individuals, as proposed by the liberal democratic traditions (very often opposing traditions, as evidenced by numerous confrontations throughout our history). So presenting the crisis as a moral problem means we will have to refer back to the universal, human values that God sowed in man’s heart and that ripen apace with our personal and collective growth. When we bishops keep saying, over and over again, that the crisis is fundamentally a moral crisis, we are not brandishing a cheap sense of morals, reducing the political, social, and economic issues to a matter of the individual’s conscience. That would be “moralizing.”
We are not “feathering our own nest” (since conscience and morals are, of course, Church matters); no, we are referring to the collective appraisals that have been expressed in historical, political, and social attitudes, actions, and processes.
The free-will actions of human beings, in addition to our own individual responsibility, have far-reaching consequences: they generate structures that endure over time and create a climate in which certain values can either occupy a central place in public life or be marginalized from the reigning culture. And this, too, falls within the moral sphere. That is why we must regain the particular way we had, in our history, of coexisting and forming a community. From this standpoint, let us now go to the poem. Like any popular story, Martín Fierro begins with a description of the “original paradise.”
It depicts an idyllic reality in which the gaucho’s life follows the serene pace of nature, surrounded by everything dear to him, working happily and skillfully, enjoying the company of his friends, and living a simple human lifestyle. What is the meaning of this scenario?
First of all, the author was not moved by a kind of nostalgia for a “gaucho lost Paradise.” The literary device of describing an ideal situation at the beginning is no more than an initial presentation of the ideal itself. The value to be reflected is not behind us, at the “origin,” but up ahead, in the project. At the origin is the dignity of a child of God, the vocation, the call to implement a project.
It is a matter of “putting the end at the beginning” (an idea which, by the way, is profoundly biblical and Christian). The direction in which we steer our coexistence has to do with the kind of society we want to be, with what our goal is. Therein lies the key to a nation’s character. This does not mean we should ignore the biological, psychological, and psychosocial elements that influence our decisions. We cannot help but take up the burden (in the negative sense of constraints, conditioning, encumbrances, but also in the positive sense of carrying with us, incorporating, aggregating, integrating) of the inheritance received, the behaviors, preferences, and values that have been built up over time. However, a Christian perspective (and this is one of the things that Christianity has brought to mankind as a whole) values both “the given,” what is immanent in man and cannot be otherwise, and what comes forth from his freedom, from his openness to all that is new; in short, from his transcendent spirit, always in accordance with the virtuality of “the given.”
Now society’s constraints and the form they took, as well as the discoveries and creations of the spirit in expanding human horizons always just a little bit further, along with the natural law innate in our conscience, come into play and are materialized in time and space: in a specific community, sharing a land, proposing common goals, building their own way of being humans, of cultivating the numerous ties, together, over many shared experiences, preferences, decisions, and events. That is what gives rise to a common ethic and openness toward a destiny of abundance that defines man as a spiritual being.
That common ethic, that “moral dimension,” is what enables the group to grow together, without enmity. If we think of a pilgrimage, the act of starting out from the same place and heading for the same destination enables the column to continue as a unit, regardless of the different pace of each group or individual.
To sum up this idea, then, what is it that makes a bunch of people a nation? First of all, there is a natural law and then a heritage. Second, there is a psychological factor: man becomes man (each individual or the species as it evolves) through communication, interaction, love for his fellow beings. Through words and through love. And third, these biological and psychological-evolutionary factors become real and really come into play, in our free-will behavior, in the desire to bond with others in a certain way, to build our lives with our neighbors in a range of shared practices and preferences. (Saint Augustine defined a people as “an assemblage of reasonable beings bound together by a common agreement as to what they love.”)
What is “natural” grows into what is “cultural” and “ethical”; the social instinct takes on human form in the free choice to become “us.” A choice that, like all human actions, tends to become a habit (in the best sense of the word), generates a feeling of belonging, and gives rise to historical institutions, to the extent that each of us comes into this world within a community already formed (the family, the patria) without this curtailing the responsible freedom of each person. And all this rests solidly on the values that God imprinted on our human nature, on the divine breath that encourages us from within and that makes us children of God. That natural law that was gifted to us and imprinted on us so that it would “become consolidated down through the ages, and develop and grow with the passage of time” (see Vincent of Lérins, Commonitory, chapter 23). This natural law, which—throughout history and life—becomes consolidated, develops, and grows, is what saves us from the so-called relativism of consensus values. Values cannot be consensual: they just are.
In the accommodating game of “reaching a consensus on values” there is always the risk, predictably, of “downgrading.” At that point, we are no longer building on solid ground, we are entering the violence of degradation. Somebody once said that our civilization is not just a throwaway civilization, it’s also “biodegradable.”
Getting back to our poem: Martín Fierro is not the Bible, of course, but it is a text in which, for various reasons, we Argentines see ourselves reflected. It is a medium for learning something about our history and for dreaming about our future:
I have known this land
in which my compatriot lived
and had his cabin
and his children and his wife.
It was a delight to see
how he spent his days.
This, then, is the “initial setting” in which the drama unfolds. The Gaucho Martín Fierro is, above all, an inclusionary poem. Everything will later be disrupted by some twist of fate, embodied by the judge, the mayor, and the colonel, among others. We suspect the conflict is not merely literary. What lies behind the text?
MARTÍN FIERRO, AN “INCLUSIONARY” POEM
A modern country, but a country for all
Rather than an abstract “epic poem,” Martín Fierro is a poem of protest with a clear intention: to oppose the official government policy and propose that the gauchos be included in the newly developing country:
The poor man being stateless
is fortune’s wretched cast-off
for no one takes his side
in the defense of his race.
The gaucho deserves home,
school, church, and rights
And Martín Fierro came to life, far more than the author intended, becoming the classic example of all those persecuted by an unjust, exclusionary system. The verses of the poem are impregnated with a certain folklore imbued from the surroundings, so Fierro touches not only on the desirability of promoting cheap labor, but also on man’s dignity in his homeland, taking charge of his destiny through work, love, festivity, and fraternity.
From here, we can begin to take our reflections further. We want to know where to place our hope, how to rebuild the social ties so grievously affected in these times. The pot-banging protest was like a spark of self-defense, spontaneous and at a popular level (though to keep repeating it detracts from its original meaning).
We know it wasn’t enough just to bang our pots and pans: what we need most now is something to put in them. We must regain, in an orderly and creative way, the prominence that we never should have relinquished, so we cannot now stick our head back in the sand and let our leaders do and undo as they wish. We cannot do that for two reasons: one, because we’ve seen what happens when political and economic power becomes detached from the people; and two, because the task of reconstruction belongs not just to some but to all of us, in the same way that Argentina consists not only of the ruling class, but of each and every one of us living on this part of the planet.
So, what then? I find the historical context of Martín Fierro significant: a society taking form, a project that excludes a large sector of the population, sentencing it to statelessness and disappearance, and a proposal for inclusion. Are we not in a similar situation today? Haven’t we suffered the consequences of a model of a country built around certain economic interests, that excludes majorities, generates poverty and marginalization, and that tolerates all kinds of corruption provided the interests of the hard-core power are left untouched? Haven’t we been a part of that perverse system, partially accepting its principles as long as it wasn’t dipping into our pockets, shutting our eyes to those who were being excluded and who were being bulldozed by injustice, until that injustice nearly drove us all out?
Now we have to draw up an economic and social program, yes, but one that is fundamentally a political project in the broadest sense of the term.
What kind of society do we want? Martín Fierro directs our gaze toward our vocation as a people, as a nation. The poem invites us to shape our desire for a society in which everyone has a place: the Buenos Aires merchant, the gaucho on the coast, the shepherd in the north, the craftsman of the northwest, the native, and the immigrant, and where none of them covets the whole thing for himself, driving the others from the land.
The gaucho must have schools . . .
Schools were, for decades, an important means of social and national integration. For the children of the gauchos, the migrants coming from the interior of the country in to the cities, and even the foreigners who disembarked on this land, basic education provided the elements that enabled them to transcend their origins and find a place in the construction of a common project.
Today, too, from the many enriching educational proposals, we must focus fully on education.
Over the last few years, and hand in hand with an idea of country that was no longer particularly concerned with including everyone and was not even capable of planning for the future, our educational system saw its prestige decline, its support and resources wane, and its place in the heart of society fade. The well-known catchphrase “school shopping” is not just a criticism of certain specific initiatives that we have witnessed; it brings up a whole concept, according to which society is nothing more than a market. It puts schooling on the same plane as any other lucrative venture. And we should remember, time and time again, that this was not the idea behind our educational system that helped to form, albeit with successes and failures, a national community.
In this respect, we Christians have, for centuries, undeniably contributed a great deal. I don’t mean to get involved in controversy and differences of opinion that take a lot of energy. I simply want to draw everyone’s attention, particularly the attention of Catholic teachers, to the extremely important task at hand.
Depreciated, undervalued, and even attacked by many, the daily task of everyone who keeps the schools going, in the face of all kinds of difficulties, with low salaries and giving much more than they receive, is still one of the best examples of what we have to focus on again: personal dedication to the project of a country for all. A project which, from the educational, religious, or social standpoint, is political in the highest sense of the word: the building of a community.
This political project of inclusion is the task not only of the governing party, or even of the ruling class as a whole; it belongs to all of us. The seeds for the “new era” are sown in the specific, everyday life of each of the nation’s members, in each decision regarding one’s neighbor, in accepting one’s responsibilities, in small things and big things, and more so in the bosom of our families and in our everyday school or working life.
But God has to allow
these things to improve
though we must remember
in order to do the job well
that the fire, to provide heat,
must always be lit underneath.
But this calls for further reflection.
MARTÍN FIERRO, A COMPENDIUM OF CIVIC ETHICS
Hernández, too, probably realized that the “genuine” gauchos, the gauchos of flesh and blood, were not going to behave like “little English lords” in the “new society being forged.”
Coming from another culture, used to the open spaces, accustomed to decades of resistance and struggle, outsiders in a world that was springing up with very different parameters from their own, they, too, would have to make an enormous effort to integrate, once the doors were opened to them.
The resources of popular culture
The second part of our “national poem” claimed to be a kind of “handbook of civic virtues” for gauchos, a “key” to becoming integrated in the new nation.
And what I say
you can all believe.
So, therefore, understand me,
I am not tainted by greed.
It will not rain on the cabin
where this book is read.
Martín Fierro is full of the elements that Hernández himself had imbibed from the folklore, elements which, along with his defense of certain specific and immediate rights, quickly earned him great support. Moreover, in time, generations upon generations of Argentines reread Fierro . . . and rewrote it, adding to his words their own experiences of struggle, expectations, searching, suffering . . . Martín Fierro came to represent the determined, fraternal, justice-loving, indomitable country. That is why it’s still pertinent today. That’s why those “tips” on “taming” the gaucho far transcended the meaning they had when written and are still today a mirror of civic virtues that are not abstract but are deeply embodied in our history. We shall now take a look at those virtues and values.
The advice of Martín Fierro
I invite you to read this poem. Not just out of literary interest, but as a way of letting the wisdom of our people speak to you, the wisdom that has been captured in this singular work. Beyond the words, beyond the story, you will see that what we are left with, beating inside us, is a kind of emotion, a desire to twist the arm of all injustice and lies and to continue building a history of solidarity and fraternity, in a common land where we can all grow as human beings; a community where freedom is not an excuse to disregard justice, where punishment is not meted out only on the poor, and where everybody has a place. I hope you feel the same as I do: that it isn’t a book about the past, but rather about the future we can build. I am not going to extend this message—which is already very extensive—by going into the many values that Hernández puts in the mouth of Fierro and other characters in the poem. I simply invite you to consider them in depth, through reflection and, why not, through dialogue in each of our educational communities. Here I will set out only some of the many ideas we can recapture.
Honesty or “trickery”: Acting truthfully and with goodness . . . or out of convenience
Man is born with the astuteness
that has to serve him as his guide.
Without it he would succumb,
but in my experience
in some it turns to good sense
and in others to trickery.
Some men’s heads
are full of knowledge;
wise men take many guises
but I, though unknowledgeable, say
that instead of learning a lot
it is better to learn what is good.
A starting-off point. “Honesty” or “trickery” as ways of organizing one’s own gifts and acquired experience. Acting appropriately, in accordance with the truth and goodness that are possible here and now, as opposed to well-known manipulating information, situations, and interactions out of self-interest.
The mere accumulation of knowledge (for whatever purpose) or true wisdom, which includes “knowing” in the double sense of knowing and appreciating, and which is guided both by truth and goodness. “Everything is permissible for me, but not everything is beneficial for me,” as Saint Paul would say. Why? Because, besides my needs, desires, and preferences, there are those of my neighbor; and what satisfies one at the expense of the other ends up destroying both.
The hierarchy of values and the success ethics of the “winner”
Neither fear nor greed
is welcome if they rob one.
So do not fret
over perishable things.
Never be generous to the rich
and never be mean to the poor.
Far from suggesting that we be contemptuous of material things as such, the popular wisdom expressed in these words considers perishable goods as a means to an end, as a way to reach a higher level. That’s why it says not to be generous to the rich (the type of calculating, servile behavior that would be recommended by the “trickery” of Old Vizcacha) and not to be mean to the poor (who do need us and, according to the Gospel, have nothing with which to repay us). Human society cannot be governed by a “law of the jungle” by which everyone tries to snatch what he can, at any cost. And we know, only too painfully, that there is no “automatic” mechanism for ensuring fairness and justice. Only an ethical choice transformed into specific practices, with effective means, is capable of preventing man from falling prey to man. But this is the same as postulating an order of values that is more important than personal gain and, therefore, a type of asset that is superior to tangible ones. And we are not talking about issues that require a certain religious belief in order to be understood; we are talking about principles such as human dignity, solidarity, and love.
“You call me ‘teacher’ and ‘master,’ and rightly so, for indeed I am. If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another’s feet. I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do.”
JOHN 13:13–15
A community that does not bow down before wealth, success, and prestige and that is capable, instead, of washing the feet of the poor and needy would be more in keeping with this teaching than the winner-at-any-cost ethic that has been so unfortunately prevalent in recent times.
Work and the kind of person we want to be
We are obliged to work
because we have to spend.
Don’t risk suffering
a sorry situation.
The heart of a man who is forced to beg
bleeds profusely.
• • •
Do we need to add anything here? History has branded our people with a sense of the dignity of work and the worker. Is there anything more humiliating than not being able to earn a living? Is there a worse way to proclaim the uselessness and nonexistence of a human being? Can a society that condones such baseness while shielding itself behind abstract technical explanations light the way for man’s self-realization?
But our recognition of this, which we all proclaim, isn’t fully cooked. Not just because of the objective conditions that are responsible for the terrible unemployment at present (conditions which, we must not keep quiet about it, have their origin in a way of organizing coexistence that places profit above justice and law), but also because of a mentality of viveza (another local term!)—“craftiness”—that has become a part of our culture. “Getting away with things” . . . in the easiest way possible. “Money makes money” . . . “nobody ever got rich by working” . . . beliefs that have nurtured a culture of corruption which undoubtedly has to do with the “shortcuts” by which many have tried to circumvent the law of earning one’s living by the sweat of one’s brow.
Urgent care for the weakest
When the stork gets old
its sight fails, and
in its old age it is cared for
by all its young daughters.
Learn from the storks
this example of tenderness.
According to the “winner” ethic, whatever is considered useless gets thrown out. This is the “throwaway” civilization. In the ethics of a truly humane community, in the country that we would like to have and that we can build, every human being is valuable, and the elderly are valuable in their own way, for many reasons: the duty of filial respect, set out in the Ten Commandments; the indubitable right to rest within their community, earned by those who have lived, suffered, and contributed what they could; the contribution that only they can still make to their society, since, as Martín Fierro himself says, “it is out of the mouths of the old / that the truth is spoken.”
We should not wait until the social security system, currently ruined by the pillaging that has gone on, gets back on its feet; there are countless ways in which we can provide a service to our seniors; in the meantime, all we need is goodwill and some creativity. Similarly, we cannot ignore the specific possibilities to do something to help the children and all those who are sick and suffering. The belief that there are “structural” issues involving society as a whole and the state itself, in no way exempts us from doing our bit, however small it may be.
No more theft, bribery, or “don’t get involved”
The bird with the hooked beak
is fond of thieving.
but the thinking man
never takes a cent,
for while there is no shame in poverty
there is in theft.
This may be one of the country’s most ill-learned lessons. But beyond that, apart from never again permitting or justifying theft and bribery, we would have to take far more decisive and more positive action. For example, by asking ourselves not only what we should not take from others, but rather what we can give. How can we express the idea that there is also “shame” in indifference, individualism, withholding (stealing) what one can contribute to society just for the sake of “doing my thing”?
But because [the doctor of law] wished to justify himself, he said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied, “A man fell victim to robbers as he went down from Jerusalem to Jericho. They stripped and beat him and went off leaving him half-dead. A priest happened to be going down that road, but when he saw him, he passed by on the opposite side. Likewise a Levite came to the place, and when he saw him, he passed by on the opposite side. But a Samaritan traveler who came upon him was moved with compassion at the sight. He approached the victim, poured oil and wine over his wounds and bandaged them. Then he lifted him up on his own animal, took him to an inn and cared for him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper with the instruction, ‘Take care of him. If you spend more than what I have given you, I shall repay you on my way back.’ Which of these three, in your opinion, was neighbor to the robbers’ victim?” He answered, “The one who treated him with mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”
LUKE 10:29–37
Empty words, true words
Try, if you are singers,
to sing with feeling.
Do not tune your instrument
just for the sake of talking,
and make a habit of singing
about things that matter.
Communication, hypercommunication, noncommunication. How many “superfluous” words are spoken among us? How much gossip, defamation, and slander is there? How much superficiality, banality, and wasted time? The ability to communicate ideas and feelings is a wonderful gift we don’t fully appreciate.
Couldn’t we make an effort to stop all the “gabbing” we do “just for the sake of it”? Might that make us more attentive to what we say too much of and what we say too little of, especially those of us whose mission is to teach, speak, and communicate?
WORDS AND FRIENDSHIP
Finally, let us talk about the stanza that so clearly reflects the commandment of love in difficult circumstances for our country. The verse has become a slogan, a platform, a rallying cry, and we should recall it again and again:
Brothers must stand united,
for that is the primal law.
They must stand truly united
at all times,
for if they fight amongst themselves
outsiders will devour them.
This is a critical time for our patria. Critical and foundational, and, for that very reason, brimming with hope. Hope is as removed from effortlessness as it is from faintheartedness. It demands that we give our best to the task of rebuilding what is communal to us, what makes us a people.
These reflections are intended only to awaken a desire: that of getting down to work, encouraged and enlightened by our own history, of not letting go of our dream of a patria of brothers, which guided so many men and women in this land.
What will future generations say of us? Can we face the challenges before us? The answer is: Why not? Without pomp or messianic illusions, or impossible certainties; it’s a matter of plunging bravely back into our ideals, the ones that guided our history, and of starting, right now, to implement other possibilities, other values, other forms of behavior.
In summary, here is the last verse I quote from Martín Fierro, a verse that Hernández puts in the mouth of the gaucho’s eldest son in his bitter reflection on jail:
Since of all the things,
as far as I, in my ignorance, understand,
that His Divine Majesty
granted to arrogant man
speech is the first,
and the second is friendship.
Words or speech allow us to communicate, connect us, enabling us to share ideas and feelings, provided we speak the truth always, without exception. Friendship, including social friendship, with its “long arm” of justice, which is the greatest treasure, the asset which cannot be sacrificed for any other, which must be nurtured above all else.
Words and friendship. “And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14). He did not set himself apart from us; he became our friend.
“No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father.”
JOHN 15:13–15
If we start, right now, to value these two gifts, our country’s history could be very different.
Let us end by placing these wishes in the hands of the Lord with the prayer for our patria offered up by the Argentine bishops:
Jesus Christ, Lord of history, we are in need of thee.
We are wounded and overwhelmed.
We need thy comfort and thy strength.
We want to be a nation,
a nation identified by its passion for truth
and its commitment to the common good.
Give us the courage of the freedom of God’s children,
to love all people, to the exclusion of none,
favoring the poor and forgiving those who offend us,
scorning hatred and building peace.
Grant us the wisdom of dialogue and the
joy of hope that thwarts us not.
Thou hast summoned us. We are here, Lord,
close to Mary,
who hails us from Lujan, thus:
Argentina! Sing out and walk boldly on!
Jesus Christ, Lord of history, we are in need of thee.
Amen.