Marching with Isaiah

Since 1976 the last hours of every old year and the first hours of every new year have always found us on the streets of our city with the Peace March. In a few hundred, many thousands, every year we wanted to remind ourselves that peace is a gift from God, entrusted to all of us and to our responsibility to seek it, preserve it, make it grow on Earth.

After two years in which Covid forced us to reflect on peace without leaving the Arsenale, this year we were able to resume the gesture of the peace march.
Leaving the Arsenale, we visited the brothers and sisters of the Little House of Divine Providence, the Cottolengo. We entered the Citadel of Charity, we crossed the avenues greeted by the nuns, by the guests, by Father General Carmine Arice. We lived a moment of sharing with all of them to make communion more evident. The year ended with this sign of fraternity, but also with pain in my heart for the dozens of open conflicts in the world and for what began right in the heart of Europe and that we never expected to see. And the question of meaning has become stronger.
What is the use of marching for peace if the decisions of the greats do not respect the people's desire for peace?
What is the use of skipping the New Year's Eve for leisure and deciding to march with a few, with many, and do it for peace? What were the marches of so many years, made on foot for peace, for? Useless time, one might say, time that yields no results. Sure, it's just steps, it's not much, but it's more than nothing. Standing still is even less.

Walking for peace is above all an exercise for ourselves, to recover the motivation to believe in peace. For this reason, the steps of this New Year's march were accompanied by the reading into the microphone of the motivations that many young people brought to us from all over Italy.
To consolidate our convictions, to look at peace as God sees it, to desire it where it does not exist. It's good for us to go at a slow pace, walking alongside other people who believe in us like us, keeping our hearts and minds connected to the slow pace of our steps.

The prophet Isaiah guides us with the word that God puts on his mouth: «How beautiful are the feet of the messenger of glad tidings, who proclaims peace, the messenger of good, who proclaims salvation, who says to Zion: your God"" (Is 52:7). Walking with God in our hearts, we try to do like him, we look at Heaven, we see the reality of the Kingdom and we proclaim the time of peace to humanity crushed by wars and non-peace: weapons transformed into work tools, armed armies changed into armies of peacemakers Even our few steps are full of meaning if the heart and the head are connected with the slow walk and each step accompanies the motivations that make us be on the side of peace , to believe in peace despite everything, to make it ours with conviction.Then everything takes on meaning.

Strengthening motivations is the commitment of those who want to be on the side of peace; if you go after whoever shouts the loudest, you go in the opposite direction, now it's time to go against the tide. Peace is the aspiration of all peoples, but it is the commitment of a few and in these times even discouraged and disappointed. Isaiah knows something about it and to his people, to us, he repeats: «Strengthen your weak hands, make your weak knees firm. Say to the lost of heart: "Take courage, do not be afraid! Here is your God [...] He is coming to save you"» (Is 35:3-4).

Rosanna Tabasso
NP January 2023