The Gospel communicates Jesus to us and we try to transform our life into His.
by Rosanna Tabasso
A few months ago (ndr inizio 2017), the bishop of Turin Cesare Nosiglia held a retreat and commented on the page of the Rule of the Sermig Fraternity: Our Gospel rules, recalling the commitment of Francis of Assisi to follow the Gospel sine gloss, without if and without but, “because the Gospel is not a book, but a person. The Gospel communicates Jesus to us because he comes to live in us ". This page was the first that Ernesto Olivero wrote and expresses a deep nostalgia for authenticity, a desire to start again from the origins, from the point closest to the life of Jesus. It is a research that is leading us to the essence of Christianity: to make people live simply Christ in the works, to "transform our life into his".
Ours is the nostalgia of those who live in the world as in a dress that does not fit them well and seeks other ways where the person is at the center, relationships are moved by love, the laws reflect rights and duties for everyone, where there is no fail to respect the weakest and the harmony of creation, where it is taken into account that life, left to itself, dies and that in everyone there is an irrepressible need for God.
The Gospel reflects this type of life, a good life for all that we Christians have often treated as a beautiful fairy tale for children, not as a possible life project in this world. The Gospel is not an illusion, an escape from reality. It is concrete life, if we replace the mentality of the world with his. The Gospel listened to, prayed to, brought down into everyday life brings about this transformation. Those familiar with the Word change slowly but radically.
We all need it, especially young people. We experienced this at the Arsenale during the summer, proposing a path of listening to the Gospel with a short comment and some ideas for the day. In a short time, he created a different atmosphere between people, a different look on life and for everyone it was like starting a journey inside himself. Day after day, the Word reveals to those who listen to it its preciousness, its uniqueness, its ever-new being. It is the way of a personal encounter with Jesus and the beginning of a relationship with him: I learn to know the traits of his Person, his being friend, teacher, fellow traveler, Son of God, risen and alive; in meeting women, sick people, children, with the Pharisees or sinners, I recognize his way of placing himself, of getting close, of communicating and changing the quality of life.
Day after day, we learn the conditions with which to read the Word, the intentions of the writer, and "the absurdity of the beatitudes, turning the other cheek, forgiveness become possible". Even the most difficult pages reveal their meaning and understanding opens the amazement of love. Thus, accompanied on this journey, everyone rediscovers the beauty, the novelty, the completeness of the Gospel, everyone learns to feel it the true answer to their deepest search.
It is striking that even young people far from this sensitivity and those furthest from faith, guided, discover the answer to their setes of meaning and meaning in Jesus' life proposal: “I thirst for things that make me and others feel good, like love and friendship. It strikes me how many are convinced that inside each person there is something good and this makes us live better, while I often don't think about it and I seem to be a nullity with no beauty inside. I can be myself without masks on my face, and if I live like this I can truly meet others and Jesus himself. We all have a value, sometimes I can't recognize it.
Jesus gave value to every person he met, and this made her reborn. I don't have to feel guilty because I have doubts about God, but rather learn to look for him in different forms, in people. I understood that I need something that goes beyond the things I have and do every day ... and that at some point in life you have to know how to do it, you have to have the courage to do it and to abandon yourself to this Love greater than us. "