A: 30th Sun of OrdTime (25 Oct 2020) - HOME BREEDING TYRANNY (Exo 22:20-26)

The book of Exodus is popular with the story of the deliverance of the Israelites from their slavery in Egypt as narrated in its first part (Exo 1:1–15:21). Meanwhile, its second part talks about specific laws, ordinances, and instructions in community life and in the construction of the Ark of the Covenant and the Tabernacle of God’s presence (Exo 15:22–40:38). What is noticeable in the trajectory of the entire book is the movement from geopolitical (cf. Crossing of the Red Sea in Exo 14:10-31) to moral emancipation (cf. Ten Commandments in Exo 20:1-17), and from societal (cf. Covenant Law in Exo 20:22-26) to cultic living (cf. Building of the Ark and the Tabernacle in Exo 25:1–40:38).

Our first reading today situates the setting in the threshold of societal living. The crux of Exo 22:20-26 lies in God’s special concern for the least in the community, viz., foreigners (v. 20), widows (v. 21), orphans (v. 21), economically poor (v. 24), and weak neighbors (v. 25). This attention to the underprivileged informs that their collective liberation from slavery was not yet fully realized, rather it needed still to be completed particularly from the societal structure of sin. Additionally, it hints that the Israelites, after their exodus from Egypt, should not proceed to a wholesale cultic concern alone without batting an eyelash on the sufferings within their fold. Hence, social emancipation is part and parcel of Israel’s integral liberation.

Pope Francis, in his recent encyclical entitled “Fratelli Tutti,” shows a similar concern to the marginalized sectors of the global society. In the document, he emphasizes the importance of social friendship that aims at forging a universal brotherhood/sisterhood amidst the throwaway culture of the world today (FT §19). He meditates on the story of the Good Samaritan (Lk 10:25-37) that underscores the value of interethnic and interreligious solidarity (FT §66) as we are “all in the same boat, where one person’s problems are the problems of all” (FT §32).

If Pope Francis’ model of fraternity is applied into the Exodus story, we can say that the Israelites’ liberation from Egypt should not stop at their independence from the imperial yoke of captivity. Rather, it continued to be an ongoing struggle for a manumission from structural slavery within their very society. While they could be physically out of the Egyptians’ reach and control, this did not guarantee that the same oppressive ways were not present among them since, in the final analysis, their own leaders were propagating the same, or even worse, form of moral enslavement of their members. True liberation happens both ad extra and ad intra!

In history, we do know that there are numerous incidents of liberation from feudal and colonial occupations of countries or nations, beginning with the American Revolution in 1783 to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, or from the declaration as a sovereign state of East Timor in 2002 to the independence of Montenegro from Serbia in 2006. The cessation of world wars that we last saw in 1945 indicates that we as one global community are one in the resolve of liberating any community from direct international hegemony. However, while the imperial yoke is being conscientiously removed, freedom is not totally achieved. It is because within the very societies of these liberated polities lie new forms of slavery such as capitalism, totalitarianism, moral decadence, patronage politics, police brutality, and many more.

In simpler terms, our world seems to repeat the same dynamics of oppression of the past. While some leaders are home breeding tyranny in our own backyards, let us do our best to oppose their despotic ways and be “builders of a new social bond” (FT §66) of fraternal solidarity.

- Rex Fortes, CM