Deliver us from evil

The living conditions of hundreds of human beings in the makeshift Vucjak camp are shameful. That field should never have been opened, "said the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe.
News of this kind can be read almost daily and one wonders: "How can we get to such a degradation of the human heart?". The great risk is that we go further without wanting to stop, perhaps because it hurts too much and we risk not enduring our own impotence in the face of Evil.

'That field should never have been open,' said the Commissioner; but it has been open and has been degrading to this day and the degradation was not inanimate objects, even masterpieces of art, but human people, exactly the same as us, our brothers and sisters, children like our children, so often spoiled. And these horrors are generally enveloped in silence, after a few days in which, rather than calling for surgery, they try to provoke a morbid sense of curiosity, which does not last and which soon needs more bread for its teeth.

We can be happy that finally someone with a certain power and responsibility has cast their eyes on that field and have gotten it closed. But have those brothers just been moved to a place that will soon become similar to the first, albeit with a few extra walls or beds, or have they found someone who really cares for them? And someone who will accept that they mix with us? Are we ready to see them walk our streets, ask for and get a job that gives them hope, little light in the darkness of a desperate life?

This is the challenge and then perhaps we are not so far from being able to "do something" and stop hiding behind the fact that Evil is so much greater and more powerful than us. We can also understand the true significance of the phrase that we repeat perhaps daily: "deliver us from Evil." We are not alone in this struggle and, if we lift even a single finger to do something, the strong presence of the Lord will make us do very important things. But making oneself available for the Lord to act through even one finger of ours is a risk.

Cesare Falletti
NP January 2020