The narrow door

On the journey of Lent, this year too the gospel of the narrow door comes to meet us and the first thought that comes to me, the first questions are always: "But why? But haven't you loved us to the last? So how are we? Sinners. Maybe a little abundant, with rounded shapes, but still your children? Why do you put us in front of a narrow door, very narrow indeed? Can you offer us a narrow and poor way, sometimes even a little sad? ".

Perhaps this Gospel is to be read with a broader gaze than simply “leaving” something of our life, letting ourselves be undressed in order to try to pass at all costs. Instead, let's try to give ourselves some rules, some suggestions to facilitate the passage that in the end it is our Easter!

First, you can't go through the narrow door if we have something in hand, be it my beam, a neighbor's beam or someone else's straw, perhaps held on purpose to make them remember it at the right moment.

Second, I cannot physically pass through this door except by myself, looking straight at the goal, without turning my gaze to the right or left to look for the others or their beams.

Third, I go there if my hands are joined, in prayer, or at most stretched forward to the next, because pointing to the others - ça va sans dire - you do not pass!

Thinking about this door and our life of fraternity, I think more of a corridor, a kind of car wash with rollers, shower heads and all the rest. A very narrow corridor with brothers on both sides, a corridor through which we have to pass, daily. There will be the brother who washes you, with the sweat of a shared job or with his tears; the one who brushes you, which looks like sandpaper, which takes away even the first skin; the one that always puffs and blows, just like the hair dryers of car washes, the one that comes to the end only to wax. Maybe it's of little use, but it's so cute ... and it sparkles a little!

One last thing, we must reach the narrow door pruned from our tips, in order to cross it without breaking the branches; to then bear fruit at the right time. I am the Door, I am the Way. We need not worry, the narrow gate can only be reached by walking on the right path, welcoming what life puts in front of us, getting off the horse as we go to Jericho and, at times, hardening the face towards our Jerusalem. Certain that in front of that Door we will have the right key to be able to pass, which is probably the charity between us. The Arsenals, they have several doors, open to the world, open 24 hours a day every day of the year, ours in Brazil is perhaps the most crossed, every day 2,400 feet tread the threshold of that door, as they are: the lucky ones, inside the shoes of a long day, many with a simple flip-flop, some naked, perhaps ready for Holy Thursday lavender.

It is a large door, that of charity and that of the Arsenal of Hope, which welcomes you as you are, with your card, your photo, your name and, if it's your birthday, it also sings best wishes to you! Come in, for a moment of rest, a hot meal, a clean bed.

Come in to change your life, if you want. You go through that door every day to go out, re-go out and face the day ahead. A passage, an Easter that asks us to come out of our tomb, but as resurrected. It is a door worth crossing, even if only to know what lies beyond.

.Alberto Brigato

NP Aprile 2022