A Good Deed Saves Lives

Giorgio Vittadini - Not everything in the world seems to end well. There are not only the great tragedies: wars, violence, oppressive regimes, devastating epidemics, famines, starvation, vast economic inequalities, and natural disasters. Even the daily lives of billions of ordinary people conceal mysterious and tragic events. Amid so many ordinary lives that come to fulfillment, in joys and sorrows, great and small, some lives do not seem to be fulfilled or reach their destiny. In one of his interviews with Corriere della Sera, Pope Francis said that every time he enters a children's ward, faced with the sickness and suffering of children, he turns to the Lord with a heartfelt question and asks him, "Why?".

Even more dramatic and tragic is the mystery of those who cannot cope with the weariness of life. It is such a profound mystery that in recent decades, even the Church, changing a centuries-old custom, has allowed a Christian funeral for all the deceased, regardless of how they died. As if to say that the human heart must be accepted, unfathomable as it is, deeply wounded as it is, with a desire for happiness that seems impossible to achieve. And, as it is, it is filled with forces that can override its freedom.

How can we not echo Christ's cry when, in the Garden of Olives, he asked the Father, "If you can take this cup from me"?

But not even this Gospel episode can provide complete consolation. During the memorial Mass for a friend who died in a moment of despair, Fr. Giussani said that even one good deed saves a life because God is merciful and cannot be contrary to himself. The most good act is the desire for the good, for something that satisfies our great and restless soul, greater than our ability to give life, as Julián Carrón used to say on the occasion of a serious bereavement.

In these moments, the way we usually interpret life is turned upside down. It is not the classic scale in which the weight of mistakes prevails, but a moment of positivity that gives meaning to even the most difficult life.

This is what a great friend of mine, Don Antonio Anastasio, who died prematurely of cancer, felt in the prime of his life, in the years he spent giving deep, human, and Christian companionship to so many people and so many young people. In one of his beautiful songs, which became popular only after his death, he says: "The party is about to begin, run and don't stop, my friend. It is the celebration of the end of evil on the shore of God's sea... We do not talk but help each other to walk. Just a glance and we help each other to walk... Step by step to the sea, I catchRimini 2024 meeting myself not knowing how to go wrong anymore. I smell the embers from the shore. I see the friends we used to joke with. And your voice calling me clearly, I did not hear it as I hear it now".

But is it possible to have an experience in which this celebration begins before the last moment of life, without forgetting the evil and the pain, without repeating in a utopian and desperate way: "Everything will be all right" without simply wanting to drug the soul like Lorenzo de Medici: "Chi vuol esser lieto sia, del doman non c'è certezza?”

The Rimini 2024 meeting, which will open in a few days, will be titled "If we do not seek the essential, what are we seeking?" Among the thousands of meetings, the focus will be on the discovery that each person's life had and has value because, as Saint-Exupéry says, "the essential is invisible to the eyes." It takes a village to educate, says Pope Francis. To continue to build and begin to hope again, it takes people who believe in the good, don't forget anyone, and know that every positive in life is useful and appearances. This belief in the good and hope is a great little sign, not only for those who participate but for everyone in these troubled times. The party has already started for you...
Download.
Translated by the Editorial Team of Epochal Change without the author's revision. Published on ilsussidiario.net