I'll take care of you

I still had shorts on. The friendship with Maria and Ernesto Olivero appears in my life. They had not yet founded Sermig.
A friendship that grew over time and which allowed me to participate, sometimes as a spectator and sometimes as an actor, in the history of Sermig. If I had to tell it, I would choose an "adagio" that is well representative of Sermig's thought. «Man needs a home, work, education and medical care... but it is not enough for him. Man needs to love and feel loved among men, but even this is not yet enough for him. Man needs God because he is a son of God." Or, in a form that is less like a sacristy, to be such a person needs to love and feel loved, to welcome and be welcomed, to be respected, to experience relationships of friendship and closeness, to be the subject and object of justice … It is logical that the spirituality of the Presence of the Lord, which teaches us to love man and makes us understand our place in today's history and in eternity, soon became a faithful companion of Sermig.

And here, precisely through Sermig, millions of people have helped millions of people.
“Helped” in the sense of enveloping them with love and dignity, with effective concrete active imaginative responses, leading them to be amazed by feeling helped and considered, to form relationships of friendship and trust. Numbers that those who open www.sermig.org will find reason for in the “Report / Our data since 1964” section. An example of how in this world it is possible to overcome evil, hunger, war, hatred, the nonsense of life with good which is stronger than evil. If weapons kill 10 times, as Ernesto Olivero states, goodness and goodness bring a life full of meaning to millions of people.

Dom Luciano Mendes de Almeida had a particularly intense and fraternal friendship with Sermig.
Former president of the Brazilian Episcopal Conference, remembered for his love for the poor, his willingness to serve and for his commitment to the defense of life and human dignity, he had a particularly intense and fraternal friendship with Sermig which allowed him to grow in concrete help for development, in spirituality, in training. I personally like to remember him for the teachings that he left us, one in particular helped me to understand more deeply the term "missionary" of the Sermig acronym. In this sick world stained by "sin" God loved the world so much that he sent his Son not to condemn the world, but to save it (Jn 3:17). Cenacle, Gethsemane, Cross are the great theophanies of Love that is given to us so that we too can be protagonists of salvation by giving our lives to vivify the world. Here is the mission, to enter the "dirty" world to "clean" it, transforming injustice into justice and sharing, violence and hatred into love and forgiveness, divisions into reconciliation, misunderstandings into dialogue and actions of peace, desperation in hope, the loss of meaning in a life full of meaning, what seems inevitable in a novelty... It's a bit like declining the simple prayer of Saint Francis: "Lord, make me an instrument of your peace...".

Even small gestures and signs fall into this panorama.
Let's think for example - precisely because we were talking about entering the "dirty" world and cleaning it up by giving it a shake - the degraded area near the Regina della Pace parish, close to the Arsenale and entrusted since last October to the Sermig Fraternity, with the inhabitants angry about drug dealing and few opportunities to live peacefully in that neighborhood. One of the latest initiatives saw the kids, who spent the Christmas holidays at the Arsenale, very happy to be involved in going to occupy that area by bringing songs, becoming an attraction for the children with games, cleaning with brooms and collecting waste left on the street. They worked and talked with the children of the parish and the neighborhood to lay the foundations for a different future in which they will be protagonists. Even the shopkeepers and the inhabitants themselves recognized that there was a beginning of hope!

This going out to meet people and get involved with difficult situations, not to take refuge in a fort to defend oneself, is present in all the Arsenals and combines well with the don't knock is already open in the Arsenals themselves.
In Sao Paulo, Brazil in 2007, on the occasion of Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Sao Paulo, the Forest that grows project was born at the Arsenale della Speranza. A name that originates from the title of the crime column A falling tree makes more noise than a growing forest, borrowed from a proverb from the beginning of Progetto. Father Simone Bernardi on NP 2016 n. 3 underlines that the guests of the Arsenale della Speranza welcomed from the street carry out concrete actions of solidarity free of charge (putting their faces and arms into it) in schools, hospitals, on the streets, in shelters for the elderly... by cleaning, recycling, painting, singing and giving hope! Why do they do it? Basically because they have found a nucleus of people, the Sermig Brotherhood in Brazil, who dare to dream of a world different from the one that threw them onto the streets and who gives them confidence. «One of the questions that most challenges us is this: if the most excluded of this metropolis have become, thanks to the welcome of a handful of people, the protagonists of thousands of thoughts and actions of solidarity that are helping them to redeem themselves, to grow and even to present itself as good news, because millions of young people, students and workers - theoretically the healthy part of the city - seem to be even more invisible than those who count for nothing? Perhaps, it is because there is a great need to give a home, a concrete outlet to those who dare to dream, especially young people. This is, more and more, the new mission of the Arsenal of Hope."

A prayer from Dom Luciano seems suitable as a conclusion:
«Lord Jesus, give us the light and strength to love and to be able to offer our lives with you "so that they may have life" (Jn 10:10). Teach us to love with you, without miracles and privileges, in total trust in the love of the Father, in the joy of helping brothers and sisters, so that everyone knows you and encounters truth and life. Amen".


Guido Morganti
NPFOCUS
NP February 2024