From China
Dear friends,
[…] God is never still! To say that "God is love" reminds us at once that He gives himself to his creatures and enters our personal story. […]
Jesus in every way sought to challenge rigid, pharisaic beliefs and ideologies, replacing them with thrilling "signs" that awaken faith—miracles and "experiences" that touch the deep meaning of our own lives. Beyond how faithfully we observe every Jewish or church rule, even as repentant sinners, He makes us feel loved by God himself and by anyone who draws near. When we take care of one another and take responsibility for others' well-being, as Jesus did for us, then we "experience" right away a love that brings joy, and God comes among us.
To be a missionary today means less preaching messages to be believed and more sharing the possibility of "experiencing" love—the experience of caring and taking responsibility for others' happiness! This is an energy that clears away difficulties and hardships, but it allows us to live through them and overcome them, and it lets God care for us too.
I have been a priest for thirty years now, and for twenty-six of them I have lived in China, chiefly trying to bear witness to a love that shows itself through countless small acts of attention—caring for people with disabilities, drawing close to those who feel less loved and supported… You know well that this has been possible because of Jesus's example, with the help of your prayers and so many contributions that have made it possible for people to experience the power of love, which—I repeat, taking it from a speech by Pope Francis—is the experience of caring and taking responsibility for others' happiness. I do not feel very capable at this, because every time I try to give or give myself, I first "count the cost." God, by contrast, has "unlimited love" and gives himself wholly. Through our beliefs and rules we often "narrow God's horizons" and make our gestures of love so "small" that they seem almost like "self-interest" measured by ourselves. God gave himself completely.
[…]
Fr. Ferdinando Cagnin
Mario
One tooth showed when he smiled. Just one tooth, always, in Mario's smile. Or perhaps a few more, but certainly fewer than there should have been. His mouth bore the marks of a life that had spared no blows. Whether it opened in a tender smile or—more often—in an explosive, nervous laugh, or even when it tightened to announce the cry of a wounded child, Mario's mouth, as if it were a Picasso, claimed his whole face. Touching that bony, hollowed-out face became difficult. Now Mario is dead. One tooth protrudes from the coffin. And we, who knew him when he was barely past twenty and who, alongside his two disabled brothers, Franco and Nicola, formed a trio that the townspeople regarded and pointed out as you might imagine—we hold back our touch. Mario had left long before: from one day to the next, the gatherings of the Fede e Luce community in Monopoli had gone on without him. He had been transferred to a group home, confirming the failure of the experiment to live in a real house, certainly not protected but among people. We had nurtured the hope that the three Cardone brothers, battered by life, might truly find a crowd of good Samaritans able to pull them from the current of a destiny marked and "protected." We failed with Mario. And Franco and Nicola now live together in an institution, and it will be unlikely that they find any different arrangement. So we hold back our touch: because we feel guilty. And I hear again the words Jean Vanier spoke at a retreat many years ago: "Roll away the stone!" Roll away the stone of guilt that weighs on your hearts, move the boulder from Lazarus's tomb and let him come out. But in this bleak, bare chapel of a provincial cemetery, I who had not visited Mario for five years and now see his tooth when it is too late—where do I find the strength to move the stone? I do as I always do: I line up my good memories of Mario laughing, and I tell myself that for a few moments, for a few years of our youth and his, we were Samaritans to him: friends of the village fool, without fear and without pride. But only for a little while. And today, with Mario lying before me, the little seems very little, and the stone will not roll away.
Vito Giannulo