Small daily correlations

There is the possibility, or perhaps the duty, to stimulate reflection in our small world of the closest and most daily relationships.

Is “keeping in the know” a duty or not? Different opinions on the subject, even in the monastic sphere. On the one hand, solidarity with everyone, attention that can become prayer, the need to form an opinion, because you don't live on another planet, require you to stop the time dedicated to work and also that reserved for leisure, to get information. . Often, however, one is left with the thirst and the sense of not having done what one intended to do, because one remains drowned in so much news and one discovers that he has the bitter feeling of not having learned anything. On the other hand, just wanting to keep to the essential is a desperate undertaking: because what is the essential? There is a challenge nowadays: information is easy to access, and this fact creates superficial and uncontrolled learning, often due to the fact that information wants to impress the feeling rather than to seriously inform. .

So much information, does it really bring us closer to those who suffer, to those who drown in insoluble problems, to those who are victims of violence in many sectors? Nobody can give an answer in our place and, perhaps with difficulty, we must admit that we are increasingly faced with the responsibility of how we spend our free time, how we fill it and what we do with it. It is a responsibility that indicates the maturity and maturity of the individual. A young man, a man in the midst of his activity or an elderly person who is increasingly confronted with his own fatigue, have quite different ways of living in time.

Furthermore, information is not enough in itself: it is useless to know many things if they do not become a source of activity in favor of others. Knowing only in order to know risks simply fueling the curiosity or satisfaction of making judgments that do not involve us. Many times, the great majority of the time, we don't know how to act and the news leaves us faced with our inability or impossibility to intervene. Perhaps, however, this is not totally true: we can and must pray, because with the love that burns in our hearts and trust in the merciful goodness of God, we influence the progress of the world, even if we do not have the possibility to control the effect. of our way of being present. There is also the possibility, or perhaps the duty, to talk about the problem and to stimulate reflection in our little world of influence, of our closest and most daily relationships. Everything leads us to change our way of behaving: being scandalized, complaining, or limiting ourselves to criticizing is useless, but reflecting on how a world event can speak and correct my little daily life is possible and serves a lot. And if this is done with a common reflection, the benefit extends to a larger area and causes a chain reaction of true conversion of the world. Evil exists and the Lord teaches us to ask to be freed from it and with us that the whole world find its freedom. Prayer is necessary, because we know that without the strength of the Lord we can do nothing. But knowing that Evil exists and that he is planetary cannot leave us discouraged and passive. We are in a great machine made up of transmissions that go gradually moving bigger and bigger gears, but every single wheel has to turn otherwise everything jams.

The confidence that everyone can act with real effectiveness on the whole world spurs us to action and then information becomes the necessary stimulus for the whole great mechanism of good to be set in motion and - from wheel to wheel - give a direction to history. , whereby Evil weakens and good embraces and saves reality, especially that of the poorest and most powerless.

Ceasare Falletti

NP Febbario 2022