I spent much of June at Oxford. Begun in the 12th century, the town and university have been growing together for more than 800 years. The huge, gothic church of St. Mary the Virgin sits right in the middle of the university. Over its long history, St. Mary's has seen just about everything there is to see in university life. Originally a Catholic church, it became Anglican during the Reformation. It even served as a courtroom for trying and convicting heretics.

The last week I was there I saw something new again.

That week, the university chancellor dedicated a plaque on the wall of the church, commemorating all the members of the university who had been martyred during the 16th century Reformation: Catholics, executed for treason by Henry VIII; Protestants, tried for heresy by the Catholic Queen Mary; Jesuits, caught by Queen Elizabeth's agents and hung: all of them were listed together.

No "C" for Catholic, or "P" for Protestant after their names. None of them labeled heretic or unbeliever. None of them tagged as betrayers of truth. All shared the same title: martyrs of conscience, victims of religious intolerance.

Though a small gesture, it really struck me that they were all listed together. Generations of Catholics and Protestants grew up hearing about the martyrs of Reformation. But for both, the "martyrs" meant the people on our side who died for their faith, not the dead of the other side. Their dead were "them," "the other side," "those who were wrong." But there, on the wall of St. Mary's, was testimony. No them vs. us. All one "us."

For the longest time we have gone about labeling those who believe or live differently from us as "them." As "those people," as the "outsider," the "alien." We have several words that designate "them" from "us." Words that create dividers. That plaque on the wall of St. Mary's pleads against them all. No more "us" and "them." No more martyrs of conscience, victims of intolerance ... please, no more.

A small gesture maybe, but an important one that seems particularly fitting today. Look at the gospel story of Matthew 15:21-22 where a Syrophoenecian woman pleads for the grace of his healing. She is "the other," the outsider, the unbeliever. She is not one of the children invited to the table — "a dog," he calls her! He recognizes the wall that separates them. We're shocked by this moment of ugliness that we don't see elsewhere in gospels.

The divide is there and we watch Jesus wrestle with it. In the end, it is his willingness to hear her claim to a place at the table of God's children and his recognition of the truth of her claim that bridges the divide between them.

He hears the claim of "the other" to a place at the table of God's children. And in the end, it is our hearing of that claim that can heal the divide between us: all God's children have a place at his table.

Jesus lived by that truth. He calls us to live by it as well.

The Rev. Timothy Eden is a Marianist priest and Chaminade University faculty member.