What Happened To Our Wings?
Simone Riva - Why do we feel so exhausted? Why do we find ourselves dragging through our days, weaving between appointments, just waiting for the chance to focus on what we truly want to do? Why do we have to justify ourselves by pointing to our packed schedules, the obligations we need to meet, or the demanding job we have to sustain? Why is it that, at times, we even feel like disappearing? And then, as if that weren’t enough, unforeseen and overwhelming burdens can also arrive. As Alda Merini confides in one of her poems:
“I need to lighten my shoulders.
Because for too long, they’ve been carrying weights I neither wanted nor asked for.
And beneath it all, there are my wings.
There’s me, who needs to fly.”
What if it’s our very need to fly that makes us feel the weight of everything else? What if we truly have an urgent need to lighten the load? But what happened to our wings?
In today’s first reading from the Mass, the prophet Zephaniah challenges us with this question: “Do not fear, Zion, do not let your hands fall limp. The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty savior” (Zephaniah 3:16-17).
The reason we can keep our arms from falling limp is the presence of a mighty savior among us. God does not offer His people an escape from reality or from their own history. Instead, He makes it possible to take flight—even with the burdens each of us carries. The certainty of His presence and the promise of His salvation are enough to allow us to see reality in a new way, even when we feel inescapably immersed in it. Reality, as we well know, simultaneously attracts us, even with the often exhausting web of circumstances and relationships that comprise it. There is a sign, a promise, embedded within things, as the prophet reveals.
Reality, then, is an open gateway to a greater mystery. This is why— as Father Luigi Giussani writes— “The real tragedy is not perceiving, with intelligence and affection, that reality does not exhaust itself in what you touch, see, and hear. Reality goes beyond reality.
That ‘beyond’ lies beneath and sustains it; it forms the nose, the mouth, and the eyes; it gives color to the iris, gives notes to the mind of the genius, gives harmony to the musician who weaves those notes together in their heart.
Reality goes beyond. The human experience that almost feels transparent in this sense is when one says ‘you’ with intelligence and love, as a human being. If a person says ‘you’ truly as a human being, they realize that, in saying ‘you,’ they affirm something that, even as they grasp it, slips away. It is more than what they grasp, more than what they hold in their hand, and it is more captivating and mysterious than what draws their affection.” (First-Year Novice Retreat, May 29-30, 1993, cit., pp. 5-6).
This is the only way we can respond to the invitation of today’s Apostle Paul: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” Otherwise, life would feel like a sentence, a constant pressure to measure up, even when we know it’s impossible. It would be a sentence to the impossible.
Christmas reminds us not to lose sight of the heart of the matter: “The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty savior.” Each one of us can experience this personally, by using the “wings” we have been given.
The author has not revised its translation.
