Save, save yourself

In 1999, with some friends, we opened a reception center for homeless people. It was a place where we tried to practice hospitality: it tried to base itself on people's problems and needs. The rules were not given and prior, the welcome was not standardized. It was an important experience that was at times naive and naïve. I remember that among the various speeches the more expert operators explained that "one person cannot save another".

They meant to say that first of all you can't save someone who doesn't want to save himself (you don't save him, he saves himself); second, you must know that the destructive force it implements is like a black hole that has a gigantic gravitational force capable of swallowing even light, an abyss that pulls you in in a way stronger than what you can implement to get it out.

Like when, for example, a person is drowning and brings out a force capable of making even those who want to save them drown. If you want to do something, you have to wait until they lose energy, faint and only then can you save them and save yourself too. It's not that desperation is stronger than good, it's that even good must be desperate, concentrate all its strength in a single point, give everything. But, generally, this doesn't happen, we don't tie our entire destiny and destination to a single person while those who are in difficulty put everything into action and drag us down. It was therefore necessary to stay at the right distance from people's problems so as not to risk burnout, so that their failure did not become your failure. It's true, but is the Christian just a social worker?

Yes, sometimes even Christians involved in the many existential peripheries have the savior syndrome: they throw themselves into the most desperate situations thinking of changing them or even redeeming them. But they contradict their own faith when they do not realize that: first it is Christ who saves and, secondly, Christ brings about his salvation by dying on the cross. Let's put ourselves on this limit which is the other, let's look into the abyss and try to ask ourselves how we would see our actions in 10 years, what will be definitive and what we will consider ephemeral. Let's lean into the vertigo of the darkness and try to see if there is a Source of light in this darkness.


Fabrizio Floris
NP April 2024