Solidarity

Two things happened in September 1980: It was on Sept. 1st of that year that I began my professional journalism career.

Later that month, the Solidarity Movement in Poland began to take shape. It was the strikes led by Lech Walesa and the support the Catholic church that helped break up the Soviet Union.
 
Solidarity with the poor and the marginalized is a key component of Catholic social teaching; after all, it is a huge part of the Gospel.
 
But when you stand in solidarity with the poor and marginalized against the evil powers of this world, it can be costly.
 
And the church stood in solidarity with the strikers in Poland.
 
The presence and the witness of the church in this struggle was evident in many ways, including the celebration of the Eucharist and the saying of Mass among the strikers at the shipyard.
 
A priest named Jerzy Popieluszko, who regularly served the workers in worship, was killed by the Communist regime because of his connection with Solidarity.
 
Solidarity.
 
In Paul’s letter to the Jews and Gentiles in Rome, we find we are in solidarity with Adam, who sinned in the Garden. In the line of Adam, we share in the sin, the ruin, the death, separation, disobedience and judgment. We are separated from God.
 
There is solidarity with Adam, but there is also solidarity with Christ.
 
In Romans 6, Paul says we find solidarity with Christ Jesus, "For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism. And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives.

"Since we have been united (since we are in solidarity) with him in his death, we will also be raised to life as he was."
 
In the early Church, a convert was baptized upon entry into the community of faith. Such a conversion sometimes separated the convert from his family.
 
He, or she, was a new person beginning life all over again.
 
The act of total immersion only added to this understanding of conversion: A person went fully under the water,  signifying death, then rose up out of the water, as if rising up out of the grave.
 
It was a rebirth. 

It was being born again.

It was a dying to sin and the old life.

It was living in grace with a new identity in Christ.
 
William Barclay explains that it was such a regeneraton that Rabbis maintained that the first child born after a man’s baptism was considered his firstborn, even if there were older children.
 
When we accept Christ, when we are baptized into Christ, there is a real solidarity with our Lord.
 
A person is in Christ.
 
One scholar Barclay notes put it this way: We cannot physically live without being in oxygen and having oxygen in us. Likewise, we can not be in solidarity with Christ unless we are in Christ, and Christ is in us.
 
As believers, we are all about being solidarity in Christ’s death. We want to die to sin so that it no longer holds us in bondage.
 
And we are all about being in solidarity with Christ’s Resurrection, because we want to live eternally with God -- Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The final transformation is this: We need to be in solidarity with the life of Christ.
 
And to do so, we need to be in solidarity with the poor, the oppressed, the marginalized, the outcasts of society.
 
Only then can we fully say we are in Christ, and Christ is in us.

Grace and peace.

BuzzNote: Background on the Soldarity Movement came from Wikipedia