Regaining What We Have Received
Simone Riva - In the fourth grade, I propose reading an interesting article published in “La Stampa” last Sept. 9, by Maurizio Maggiani, entitled “The Mystery of Evil.” The text, starting from the dramatic facts of contemporary news, insists on affirming the impossibility of understanding the full extent of the evil that surrounds and inhabits us.
But the author, perhaps without having realized it, finds a hypothesis for an answer. To those who would like to read it I leave the link for the sake of discovery. A nice dialogue opens in class, even though it is the last hour, with decidedly interesting contributions and looks caught up in the interest of what emerges. The bell rings at the end of the hour and I am struck by one girl's gesture.
She gets up from her desk, picks up her folder and heads for the classroom door. She is holding the paper with the text of the article. She crumples it up and throws it in the trash can. A little astonished and annoyed, I ask her, “Why did you throw the paper away?” she replies, “I thought you didn't need it anymore. Throughout the day, I cannot help but think back to that gesture, made to be seen. It seems to me that it effectively describes today's cultural challenge.
Today's man often finds himself thinking the same thing: that what he has encountered, and what has been passed on to him, is no longer needed. He crumples up, as if it were that paper, all the baggage that has been entrusted to him, and throws it away. But making sure that it is seen, so that it is clear that it is a challenge issued to those who, instead, kept the paper intact. How to meet this challenge without being distracted by the appearance and violence of the gesture? We can be helped by an effective expression from Goethe: “What you inherit from your fathers, regain it, to possess it.”
The great game of life is precisely not to assume that, how we live, speaks of what we have encountered. How many times do we change methods, get distracted, allow other things to block us...? This is why a girl throwing away the paper on which I proposed to confront us during the lesson, provoked me to check how I was first of all in front of what I proposed. Pope Francis, speaking about the way we stand before others, said during his general audience on January 11, 2023, “We can ask ourselves: how is our gaze toward others?
How often do we see their faults and not their needs; how often do we label people by what they do or think! Even as Christians we say to ourselves: is he of ours or not of ours? This is not the look of Jesus; He always looks at each one with mercy and predilection.” When everyone says yes to you and gives you reasons, it is all too easy to go along with the method of predilection, but when - in words or gestures - the other person says to you, “Give me the reasons for how you live, because I want to see if they still hold up, if they are adequate or if I can throw it all away in the trash,” then things change.
In the end, he won an infinite tenderness for that girl who, like so many, simply believes that what was great and decisive is now of no use. That is why it is not worth spending energy to engage in battles against who knows what enemies, but more freely to regain what we have received, thus putting the other in a position to do his own verification.
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