The gift that bears fruit

Today there is much talk of the common good. We hope that it will be done with a path of conversion from the selfishness of individuals towards a more "global" thought, towards something that distracts from the thought attached to oneself and one's own gain, to understand that, to really feel good, everyone around us needs to feel good and that it is not possible to be happy if suffering and abandonment around us let people degrade.

Does the common good require pure gift, abnegation, self-sacrifice for others? This too, but perhaps not only. A Piedmontese saying goes something like this: «Those who don't know how to take care of others in the end won't even know how to take care of themselves». We are far from the famous: mors tua, vita mea (Your death is my life), which sealed the need that if someone wants to grow, he can do it with the decrease, if not death, of someone else, or, if he wants for the other to grow he must die. If one is not capable, or does not want to, have a sensitivity that reaches out to the brother in his need, in his poverty, of every kind, and one is not moved "from the heart" to run towards him and help him to advance in the difficulty in which it is immersed, it forms around the heart, the will, even the intelligence, a wall that hides life and gives the illusion of being in a kingdom. The King the Little Prince met thought he had great dominion and great power, but in reality he had no one to rule over and no one to have a relationship of any kind with. His life was gray. He was alone and couldn't even take care of himself and try to have a beautiful life, because he didn't know what it meant to have a horizon of joy, peace and good.

The good, in fact, is not good and it is not enjoyed, if it is not given to others and self-care is not possible if one does not take care of taking care of others. Many, too many, think: "As long as I am well" and that everyone must take care of their own life and seek their own good. But if we don't do good to others, we don't even know what it can mean for us. Jesus expressed this concept in a golden rule: "What you want done to you, do to others". Or, "What you don't want done to you, don't do to others." If personal experience suggests to us what is good for us and, being educated about what can be good for others, we don't do it, we lose the sense of what can be good for us, because if the good does not spread, it remains barren and dies.

The greatest service we can do to ourselves is to serve others: in this way things find a meaning, an order, a direction in which to walk and live an increasingly full life . Turning around itself, life gets mouldy.
The search for the common good develops all our potential within us. It takes more capacity for invention, imagination, enthusiasm to take care of the good of all, than to think only of oneself. For this, in fact, the instinct that makes one fight to obtain according to desires and needs would be enough, but leaves no room for beautiful things that give greatness to the human person such as genius, the development of abilities and above all friendship. If others are of interest only for what they give us and for our growth, our horizon narrows and sooner or later, at the latest when the strength begins to fail, only sad sterility gathers in our field.

Jesus spoke of making the talents we have fruitful. By hiding them we do not enjoy the fruit, neither others nor ourselves. But for them to grow we need to risk the loss and throw our little peculiarity into the common wealth. Then we will enjoy its ability to grow. If we don't know how to serve others, we won't serve ourselves either.


Cesare Falletti
NP December 2022