To Live by Creating

We humans look, search, and wait: curiosity risks taking hold of us and leading us away from a true, attentive, and collaborative life, toward a view of the world that exploits without building. We must know how to look and also how to seek; it is necessary to wait, but what is not always clear is the object of that waiting. What are we waiting for in a world where news piles up and contradicts itself within minutes? As a monk, I often ask myself: “What good does it do you to receive so much news or to look for it in different newspapers? What does all this information have to do with your life?” Three areas are involved in this search that consumes part of my time. These three areas are: prayer, thought, and presence.

Prayer is certainly not about telling God the news of the world to inform Him of what He should do. The world is sustained by His Love. We do not realize it; in fact, in searching for what happens, we often think we find more signs of His absence than of His loving presence. But the world is not what the various media describe, which tend to play more on horror and fear than on love and hope. God is hidden within the events of the world and is crucified in them. Yet the crucifixion is “pure love,” which transfigures the world we see into that which He has chosen to bring into existence. He has left us free and has taken upon Himself the weight of our whims to transform them, in the crucible of His love, into the transfiguration of the world. It is not easy to understand or even to believe, but the Creator never abandons creation: He continues to create it, otherwise it would no longer exist. And prayer is standing before Him to bring the world into Him and with Him.

Thought is the second area involved in the anxious search for reassuring news. Thought, to be free, must be nourished by much information—from everyday news to more demanding studies. We are aware that the flood of events that fill the world stage surpasses any possibility of a sure judgment, but it is important not to become imprisoned by the emotional movement they arouse in us. We should not feel obliged to express an opinion, to take sides one way or another, at least until we are certain that our thought has matured enough and is as free as possible in its expression. Then we can help others to reflect and to develop a judgment that is the fruit of consideration and choice.

Presence, the third area, is what God Himself has chosen: He wants to be immersed in the human chaos—not to take control of situations and direct them according to His plan, but because He continues to secretly infuse, into the turmoil of events, a love that saves and guides us, leaving us free in our often twisted and damaged paths, toward the Good for which all things were made. We are, like Him, immersed in the chaos, but we have been given a handful of seeds of goodness to let fall, little by little, into the soil from which we are made. The Lord spoke and created; then He placed His hands into the clay and made man, giving him the task of carrying creation forward toward ever greater perfection.

Human life is therefore sustained by the fact that it must lead creation toward its fulfillment and remain in a relationship—one of love—with the Creator and with those given to us as our fellow beings. Man lives by creating, in many forms, giving birth to relationships that tend toward love. Within this circle he finds his freedom and can breathe life.

Cesare Falletti
NP June/July 2025