Shall We Be Friends?

Simone Riva - It was a scorching day, with the sun beating down. In the school camp, during a break from the afternoon games, a child approached while the children were having a snack. "Do you want to see what I did today?" We went to the room where the boys kept their handicrafts made with colored sand in clear bottles. He proudly takes out his work and shows it to me. 

Then, we walked to the courtyard. Suddenly, he stops, lifts his head to look at me, and says, "Do you want to be friends?" Then I provoke him and ask, "How can we be friends?" He takes my hand, shakes it, and says, "We have to do this. Then he waves me down as if he wants to tell me something important. Seriously, touching his cap, he asks me, "But is it true that Jesus protects us?" A shiver ran down my spine, for it was He, obviously He, who was physically present. I ask him, "In your opinion?" Without hesitation, he immediately answered, "Yes, it is true!" 

Then he ran off to play. I was moved, and I looked for a quiet corner for a while. I thought of that longing for friendship, that disproportion between his little hand and mine, clasped together, and that demand not to be left alone. How can we not think of what moves in our hearts every day? The need to be unique in someone's eyes. The immense disparity between our hearts and that of the great Friend. 

Of the hope in a protection that can make us not waste any moment. When we become aware of our greatness and the boundless demand that fills our hearts, we run out of breath and are filled with silence. And then amazement at God's method. In the middle of a day like any other, in which you could not have imagined such a provocation, coming from a 7-year-old child, you are forced to ask yourself in a moment why you do everything. I could have brushed it off, as we often do with children, or put it off until the next day. Instead, I didn't think about missing the opportunity right before me. 

So many times, this grace has happened, and friends have reminded me not to give up on what is important. As the Pope reminded us in this year's Pentecost homily, "Without him, the Church is inert, faith is only a doctrine, morality only a duty, pastoral care only a job. You can fill churches and do things out of duty or as if it were a job. Or to show that you are up to date, that you are not out of fashion, and that you still have something to say and do. 

But the level of the Holy Spirit's action is different. He sends you a discreet, delicate sign and waits for a yes. This waiting for God always displaces us. In the whirlwind of our pretensions, we have before us a presence that waits, without tiring, for the slightest twitch of our freedom. It seems to be there with the disciples who "approached Jesus and said, 'Who then is greater in the kingdom of heaven? Then he called a little child to himself, set him in their midst, and said, "Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. 

Therefore, whoever makes himself as little as this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one such little child in my name welcomes me" (Mt 18:1-5). It is simple, perhaps too simple, which is why we close our minds to it. But the babies are awake, thank God. 

This unwritten "votum" 

These are exam weeks. Exam results are posted in schools on their silent bulletin boards. A sea of numbers trying to collect stories of attempts, successes, failures, and restarts. For middle schoolers, as for high schoolers, it is grade time. We get up, get dressed, and then rush to school with our cell phones to report the results, often expected, sometimes not. 

But there is one thing the scoreboards cannot report. One more thing that numbers cannot hold or measure. The word "vote" comes from the Latin votum, which means "desire" in Italian. 

Behind the names that make up the neat, well-printed lists of school secretaries lies a world that cannot be exhausted in a number, an inexhaustible world.

St. Augustine writes: "The whole life of the fervent Christian is a holy desire. What you then desire, you do not yet see, but by living by holy aspirations you make yourself capable of being filled when the time of vision comes. If you have to fill a vessel and you know that it will be very abundant as much as will be given to you, you try to increase the capacity of the sack, wineskin or any other adopted container. By enlarging it you make it more capable. In the same way God behaves.

By making us wait, he intensifies our desire, with desire he dilutes the soul and by expanding it he makes it more capable. Let us, therefore, try to live in an atmosphere of desire because we need to be filled. Consider the apostle Paul who dilates his soul so that he can receive what is to come. For he says, "Brethren, I do not yet consider that I have come to you" (Phil. 3:13). So what do you do in this life, if you have not come to the fullness of desire? 'This only I know: Forgetful of the past and stretching forward to the future, I run toward the goal to arrive at the prize God calls us to receive up there in Christ Jesus' (Phil. 3:13-14)" (Treatises on the First Letter of John). 

After all, school is meant to "increase the capacity of the sack," but is anyone still convinced that "it will be very abundant how much you will be given"? Sometimes the feeling is one of reduced desire due to the suspicion that, in reality, there is very little to receive. We become accustomed to a life made up of the usual things, to knowledge shrunk to notions, to repeating what others tell us to repeat ... there is a lack of a truly protagonist self, with a life that, wherever it is, becomes a proposition for anyone. 

At the San Remo Italian Misical Festival in 1971, Nicola di Bari won with the song "The Heart is a Gypsy." 

He says: "I had a wound at the bottom of my heart. I was in pain. I told her, 'It's nothing,' but I was lying. I was crying, crying. It's late for you, it's already night. Please don't hold me; let me down. She said, "Don't look me in the eyes." And she left me singing like this: "What fault do I have if the heart is a gypsy and goes away? It has no chains; the heart is a gypsy and goes. Until it finds the greenest meadow there is. It will gather the stars around it. And it will stop, who knows, and it will stop." 

There is an unstoppable drive toward the "greenest meadow there is" that saves us from any shrinking and shrinking of our desire. No grade, exam, or scoreboard can imprison the nature of our hearts. Wounded as it is, it will not play along with any anesthesiologist. Taken by the rush of freedom as God made it, it will not be on the leash of any tamer. 

Therefore, the most urgent thing we can do is root for him to remain original. Let us not be afraid if he looks like a gypsy, walking without peace or rest; he must gather the stars around him. He will become a pilgrim.

Riva, Simone. The Intensity of the Moment (Italian edition) (pp. 98-101). You can self-publish. Kindle edition. 

Unrevised notes by the author. Translated and produced by Epochal Change using AI narration. Download.