The World Does Not Know Us

Simone Riva - All of us have had the experience in our lives of not being understood. Father Julián Carrón described this dynamic well during a meeting in Missaglia in 2022: "When you have a problem or you're confused and you don't know where to turn, you can't get out of the tunnel; you have to look for someone. 

You don't tell the most intimate things about yourself to the first person on the street. 

Then you look for a person who is open, who is able to understand what you are saying, who is sensitive, who loves you, who is discreet so that you don't appear on Facebook tomorrow, and who is able to really understand you. 

And so, after you've identified her among everyone you know, you start talking to her one day, and at some point, after you've been talking for a while, you stop to see if she understands something. 

You say, "Do you understand me? And you see from what she answers you that she doesn't understand anything. It's not that this person doesn't have all the desire to understand. It's not that he's not trying. It's not that she's open or doesn't love you... but all of that is not enough for you to feel understood.

For one to feel understood, there has to be a humanity in the listener who can understand some of what you are telling him. He may be highly intelligent, but if something is missing in the human being that allows you to understand, it is a dialog between the deaf. In the end: thank you for being available, but it is no longer interesting.

The Apostle John uses similar words, which we will hear in the second reading on November 1: "For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know him.

Beloved, we are now children of God, but what we are to be has not yet been revealed. But we know that when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is" (1 John 3:1-2). When we look at the lives of the saints, we discover that one of the characteristics of their uniqueness is that they were not understood. 

A kind of loneliness accompanies their lives. This is not just any "misunderstanding," a general "not being known," but part of that identification with Christ to which every man and woman is called and which shines out in a unique way in the saints.
The author has not revised the translation.
English. Spanish. French. German. Portuguese. Italian. Russian. Chinese. Arabic.