(from the editorial of the Icono magazine)
The ambiguity of life leads us to expect simple things from the most complex topics. It is one of the signs of this obese and satisfied society that we have configured.
We Christians too are in that search for essentiality. What will be most urgent in this historical moment? What will we mean and what will we care about? What can we stop doing to avoid further increasing fatigue?
There are moments and phases in life when it seems like nothing happens. These are those moments in which, in my opinion, we can better seek essentiality without external motivations, without pretexts or without stimuli that often take us out of normality. Conquering the truth in daily life makes not only our person authentic, but also the essentiality of faith. Believing, and welcoming the passage of God in the succession of days, allows us to learn an exercise of fidelity which, without a doubt, brings us closer to authenticity.
The key is to live with art that offers life. Recreate it and open it so that, in it, we can welcome others as a gift, teaching and opportunity. The first step is to embrace normality and thus silence the accumulation of noise with which we often fill what we understand to believe.
We can often reduce our commitment as disciples to a succession of external acts, living and showing ourselves only to be seen and solicited not so much by the call of Jesus, but by the call of our desire to be protagonists.
There is no doubt that we celebrate in the community what we experience in privacy. A celebration is an authentic expression of faith when we share what we believe. It is, on the contrary, a real play when we only care about our place, our appearance, or its aesthetic result. If personal life lacks the embrace of normality, this is no less true than the same is true for our assemblies, groups, and communities…. The cry of essentiality that we all share in the Church is often offered by being slaves to absolutely aesthetic and empty measures.
I like to think of myself as a disciple. Sometimes clueless and always in love. And I like to do it while looking at the Master. Contemplating it. Trying not only to follow in his footsteps but to understand his heart. I am pleased and need that silence next to Jesus. Without further say, silence in Him and with Him. Right there an immense desire for community is unleashed within me. To tell and share with others the truths that do not need a text. Those who manage to change their hearts because they have the strength to be alive and the desire to live from the Gospel. These are the deep roots of change. He who creates communion and brotherhood. He who makes a truly new Lent possible, the only one you have before you to discover God. Yet all this happens when it seems like nothing is happening. You just go through… and let Him pass through you.
Francisco Javier Caballero, CSsR
For information on the magazine:
Icono magazine
Monthly, Marian, family, missionary magazine
(founded in January 1899).
By the Redemptorist Missionaries of the Province of Madrid)
