Prayer and forgiveness

I live with some Lebanese and Syrians: I consider it a grace, yet I am deeply confronted with some of the greatest catastrophes in the world today and it is impossible (fortunately) to escape the burden of pain, of suffering that the simple names of these mine friends conjure.
All this knocks on the heart and highlights how disarmed we are in the face of the Evil of the world: a great river fed by many rivulets that flow from different mountains, from different terrains. Against Evil we are disarmed and Jesus, who knows it well, teaches us to ask: "Deliver us from Evil".
It is not a useless or rhetorical question, it is a cry that springs violently from our hearts, while we are overwhelmed by what we hear, see or even touch us closely. Each prayer asks those who pray for a profound transformation of the heart: it is not a shopping list that crumbles in front of a merchant waiting to be served, but a sitting at a table with the Lord, to put before him that evil that wounds us and ask him to help us overcome him and when we cannot move even a finger to free us as a Father or a Mother does with her newborn baby.

We have, however, two possibilities that never fail us: prayer with its rainbow of possibilities, which always begin with the light of praise and trust, to pass to intercession and to the darker shades of the cry: "Lord, save me, Lord save us! ». Prayer is a real way to be present in the heart of the drama of the world and not only when we can do nothing, but also, and in a strong and real way, when we can enter the struggle with Evil with our poor doing, thinking, organizing. ...
Without those seeds of eternal life that prayer causes to fall into the arid and parched earth, our every action has no future. Jesus said: "Without me you can do nothing".
But we also have another possibility to fight Evil: forgiveness.

Forgiving those who harm us is no small thing and cannot be resolved with two little words: it is something that asks us to start over every day, to eradicate every regurgitation, even the smallest one, of hatred, desire for revenge, anger. Forgiveness is also asked of us for the evil that we have not directly suffered, because every evil thing hurts the whole world, all men, who often have no voice to announce forgiveness. Jesus did it for all of us, but we are the messengers who bring this ointment, this balm of life and healing to the wounds of the world. Without forgiveness there is no healing. This truth, so unknown, is the only salvation for our humanity so badly placed; yet in the face of the evil that looms, that strikes, that destroys, we hear only words of vengeance, of accusation, of a struggle that makes the wound deeper and more infected. What is justice that we must absolutely seek, without a future of forgiveness, without a climate of forgiveness? It is just an evil that becomes gangrenous in the heart, with bitter satisfactions that bring no life.

With these two weapons, not of hard metal or devastating explosives, but of great impotence, we can set out in the continuous fight against Evil and collect the tears of the poor to make them that sea of ​​crystal which in the Apocalypse is the sign that there is no 'it is more separation between peoples and that the abysses that greedily swallow those who want to throw themselves against their brothers or find a land that gives life, become a path of luminous peace on which everyone can shake hands and fight together against that Evil not generated by the heart of man, but which is a sign of that decay that leads the chrysalis to be a splendid butterfly.

Cesare Falletti
NP August / September 2020