When we suffer a wrong, the words come quickly to our lips: "But that's not fair!" We bristle easily, sometimes out of all proportion.
In the last issue, we spoke of "longing for communion" as a hope that every human being knows from birth. But is there not, bound closely to that hope, an urgent need for justice within us?
What are our small daily grievances, set against those who have borne the "misfortune" of profound suffering since childhood? The list would be endless—and precisely because the situations of hardship, whether innocent or self-inflicted, are so numerous, we are surrounded by an urgent imperative to remedy them. We who are well, we who have everything, who are loved and respected, surrounded by comfort and friends... we cannot remain indifferent to the wrongs that others endure helplessly.
If it is hard to believe—as we often hear—that justice rules in this world, it seems to me that it depends entirely on our faces, our hands, our hearts, to establish at least small justice. The kind that costs little and answers to only one court: our restless heart, tormented by a pang of conscience that rises and then quickly fades: "What can I do?"
I can take one more step, make one more gesture, give up one more thing... so that this small "more" tips the scales for my brother who has had so much less, so very much less that he has scarcely anyone to whom to say: "But that's not fair!"
Never forgetting that alongside that brother of mine, and all like him, stands the Lord Jesus, who declared with authority that he stands with them.
- Mariangela Bertolini, 2001