The curse of anonymity

his month I’m writing from Portbou, a little Spanish coastal village with a population of 1300 on the French border. For most of its history, it has been an anonymous little place tucked away in the Pyrenees.

Its claim to fame is its easy access between France and Spain, making it a place for desperate men.

In the 1930s rebels fighting against the Spanish dictator, General Franco, would go over the border for supplies and to escape Franco’s army. A decade later, Jews fleeing the advance of Hitler’s invading forces came over the border into Portbou, hoping for safe passage through Spain, into Portugal and onto a ship bound for the Americas.

From being a sleepy border town, Portbou became a place of possible salvation in a desert of hopelessness. For one man, however, it was to become the end of all hope.

With the Nazis closing in and rumours that Spain would send the Jewish refugees back into France, Walter Benjamin, a philosopher whose work helped to lay the terrain for post-modernist thought, died of an overdose of prescription drugs. The day after his death, the group he was travelling with was given safe passage to Portugal.

What a waste of such great human intellect! He still had so much to contribute in helping to decipher and give a voice to this new world of human progress and the loss of comfortable centuries-old certainties.

Fortunately, his friends did not allow Benjamin to be forgotten. They transformed this nondescript village into a living memorial for him. They had his remains placed in what must be the most beautiful cemetery I have ever seen, overlooking the Mediterranean. They delivered Benjamin (and Portbou) from what many of us fear most: anonymity.

In his famous work, Passages, Benjamin writes: It is more difficult to honour the memory of the anonymous than that of the renowned. Historical construction is devoted to the memory of the anonymous.

Benjamin was trying to express something that we, as Christians, take for granted and is expressed in many different ways in the Scriptures: Do this in memory of me (Lk 22:19), or, Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, you do unto me (Mt 25:40).

The Eucharist is more than remembering a unique moment in history when Christ offered himself for the salvation of our souls. In each Eucharist, Jesus once again gives himself for us. But in this giving, Jesus also commissions us. Do this in memory of me. Do as I have done. Follow my example. As I have given myself for you, give yourself for others. Reach out to the anonymous people in your midst. By your actions, they shall be remembered and in remembering them, the world remembers me too.

Jesus’ favourite terrain of action was precisely in the service of the anonymous the Samaritan woman at the well, Galilean fishermen, a woman accused of having committed adultery, a man possessed by demons. All of these would have been forgotten in the annals of history, except for one thing: Jesus took time to hear their story and offer them a new way to live.

We, too, are called to seek out the anonymous of our world today, listen to their story with compassion and respond in love.

Like a homeless man named Peter from Germany whom I met at the train station in Portbou. He told me about the child he hasn’t seen in a long time, the fight that landed him in hospital, and the bandage on his leg.

Or Lily, who like millions of single mothers in South Africa, bears the burden of working several jobs to raise and educate her children in the hope that they will have a better life.

Sometimes, we can respond and offer practical help. Our office collected money to help Lily build a small home for herself and her children, a place where she can put down roots, and accord her the dignity of being a homeowner.

Other times, as in the case of Peter, there is nothing we can do to help, except listen and share some biscuits while waiting for the train.

These actions, no matter how small, help to erase the anonymity that Walter Benjamin speaks of. It is a validation of the human person.

Something as small as looking someone in the eye and acknowledging their existence, saying to them: I see you, I hear your sorrows. I don’t know if I can give you what you need, but I’ll give you what I have right now. Because you matter. You have value. Your life has a purpose.

If Walter Benjamin had encountered a hope bearer in his flight across Europe, perhaps his story may have had a different ending.

But Benjamin’s death also stands as a reminder for us reach out to the anonymous. May we be instruments through which we can transmit the blessed hope of the coming of our Lord, Jesus Christ.