BORDERS PUT TO THE TEST OF HOSPITALITY

Abstract

Physical reality, the border is also and first symbolic. It is a structure of human reality. The article points to its double dimension - inwards and outwards - and to the inherent historical dialectics between our perception of the alien and the necessary boundaries of a given community. This dialectics also underlies the relationship between our people's heritage and identity and the universal kinship that Christ invites us to embrace. Hospitality, a central Christian virtue, is an essential dimension of the contemporary philosophical reflection. Thank to this attitude, the border can become a crossing place, a place of truth. In this crossing of borders (with the foreigner, with the poor, with others religions), the living God can reveal himself.