Dear friends of Ombre e Luci, I'm writing to greet you a year on from my time in Italy, where I was able to meet so many of you and deepen friendships that had not weakened despite all the years apart (…). Returning to Guangzhou felt like coming home. I'm grateful to have entered, in some small way, into the lives of these people—and more, to have them enter into mine. I won't claim that after so many years in China I've become one of them, because we missionaries can never fully do so. Now and then our own culture resurfaces. The impulse to feel superior in certain things wants to assert itself. The daily effort is to draw as close as possible to them as friends, as brothers (…)
For more than six years I've lived in a group home with six people who have intellectual disabilities. The neighborhood on the edge of Guangzhou, where this house is located, is very different from my hometown on Lake Como. But being here with these simple people is a precious experience. Every day I thank God for this calling, for the chance I've been given to grow as a person and as a Christian. The "mama" (a woman who left her children in a distant village to work in the city) is my example—through the patience and love with which she cares for our young people, and through her frugality, making our meager budget stretch. She greets everyone who visits us with a constant smile and warmth (…)
China is making enormous progress. A few days after Christmas I was seventy kilometers from here, near a railway viaduct. Suddenly came a roar: in a flash, the Guangzhou-Wuhan train shot past—the fastest in the world, they say, just inaugurated. When the line is complete, you'll be able to travel from southern China to Beijing in eight hours. Coming back home, I had the surprise of riding the fifth metro line, which opened the day before. More will follow now that the city prepares to host the fifteenth Asian Games. Material progress is welcome. But the gap between the newly rich and ordinary people is enormous here too. The "mama" commented on the news of the new Wuhan train—which she must take to return to her village for the Lunar New Year holidays—this way: "It's a train I can't afford to take. Five hundred yuan (fifty euros) for a second-class ticket is half my monthly salary." China today is parched by rampant consumerism and desperately needs greater social justice. What it needs most is a spiritual renewal, because "Man shall not live by bread alone" (Matthew 4:4). Being leaven in the dough—that is the great challenge for the small flock of Chinese Christians. It is a challenge for me as well. I feel one with this Church, still burdened by suffering. I ask you to pray that I might be a credible witness to God's love for us.
