The Anchor
Simone Riva - Often days go by, overwhelmed by a thousand things. With the days come weeks, months, and years. Everything seems wrapped in a net from which we can’t escape, in a march that we can’t stop. A friend confided to me a few days ago that sometimes it seems to her that she lives in the middle of the highway, with cars on either side and no room to move. Even the good things we experience can become a significant commitment to cope with, another duty to pay to stay on the wave's crest.
It is as if reality no longer has a centre, a heart, around which to revolve. So we desperately attempt to be that center, and we wear ourselves out. Or we resign ourselves to being scattered in a totally agitated life.
That is why, in the Gospel of this Sunday, Jesus says he is the center and heart, in a way that makes it impossible to miss. The historical human point is where the expectations of ancient prophecies and the world's destiny meet. "Then they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds with power and great glory" (Mark 13:26), says Jesus, the Son of Man. Christ is the only still point in the dark of the sun and moon, the falling stars, and the shaking of the heavens. As John Paul II defined him in his first encyclical, Redemptor Hominis: "The Redeemer of man, Jesus Christ, is the center of the cosmos and of history."
It happens in life, it happens in history, it surprises us in daily life. We can hold onto this presence to not be overwhelmed by circumstances. In front of Him, everything regains its order and meaning, even the most tiring things. The great poet Mario Luzi put it so well in his poem “A volte si tocca il punto fermo e impensabile”: "Sometimes one touches the still and unimaginable point / where nothing is separated from nothing, / neither death from life / nor innocence from guilt, / and where even pain is full of joy. / These are things that are said for us alone. / Others would laugh at them. / But to say them one must. I record them / for you, who know them well, and as a testimony of eternal love."
Of course, we can only talk about this center to those who “know well” what we are talking about; to others, it would be incomprehensible. And so the very fact that we are understood and have someone to whom we can speak without him dropping what we say becomes the truest proof that we aren’t condemned to agitation. "He will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens” (Mk 13:27); the Gospel continues as if to draw the final picture, to describe its connotations, that of unity and communion finally achieved and realized by him, without force, without pretense, without deception, but with the final gathering carried out by his angels.
People who are not sure now are trying to inspire us, teach us, and make us believe in something that is always there. This is so we can live happily without feeling like they must find their own way.
The author has not revised the text and its translation.
