I happened to talk to a friend about our dear Europe and the trend that many call the epidemic of loneliness. “I have the impression that we are facing a world where we cannot get beyond two ways of living: on the one hand, tribalism, and, on the other hand, individualism,” he said. “It’s either one or the other.” Upon closer inspection, however, there seems to be a common root to these seemingly opposing dynamics: in either case, we surround ourselves with people who are replicas of ourselves or we isolate ourselves in the bunker of our thoughts, and, eventually, we remain hopelessly alone.
A brief glance at the world around us seems to confirm all of this. Recent general elections in many European countries have shown a significant increase in support around so-called nationalist parties. This is a fact that can be read as a desperate search for a lost identity or as a fear of anything beyond our control. Even those circles that preach a colorless global brotherhood -without sky, nation or religion, as John Lennon sang -often show themselves as systems closed to any possibility of dialogue. More and more young people are struggling to get out of their rooms, preferring virtual places in which they feel safe and pampered to reality itself. The world of work seems to have become the place where everything, from relationships with colleagues to choice of profession, must be experienced as a function of one’s solitary self-assertion. Sometimes, talking to parents and young people, I get the impression that they are willing to sacrifice even happiness in the name of independence, which has now become an absolute value.
The stories of our missions in Europe speak of experiences of friendship
But is this truly the whole picture? The stories of our missions in Europe say something different. They speak of the experience of friendship that is born, due to grace, around an invitation that comes from far off. The same that was pronounced for the first time two thousand years ago by a man during a dinner with his closest friends: I have called you friends, because I have told you everything (Jn 15:15). The everything of which that man, Jesus, was speaking, the substance and secret of friendship that He was proposing, was the profound sharing of the human and the divine, that surge of new life that He Himself had brought into the world, which flowed from the very heart of God and that does not leave one tranquil, but rather, throws open the horizons of the world.
An abyss that calls for a response and does not leave us indifferent
We see so many stories of friendship in our houses of mission, places built around the involvement of our lives with God, which establishes the criteria with which we face our work, our free time, our moments of rest. A 360 degree friendship, which tentatively becomes a proposal for everyone. The occasion can be a pilgrimage, a class of catechism, five days of vacation, an encounter at school, an activity of education to charity.
We feel called to stay on the threshold of the hearts of those we encounter, provoking and attending that miraculous opening that lets us see the abyss that every man carries within. An abyss that is thirst for truth, hungry and at times dramatic searching for a Savior, hope of being forgiven, hunger for communion. An abyss that calls for a response and that does not let us remain indifferent. From this, our mission is born, which is a gift of divine treasures that we have received and continue to receive from the abyss of God, through a Body that walks in a history of two thousand years and to which unworthily and proudly we belong. Christian mission is not a game of Risk but a heart to heart encounter. The armed forces or conquered territories do not count. What counts in depth: it is in the profundity that one is truly encountered, and from there, we discover ourselves open to the encounter with all. Our mission, in the end, is animated by this sole intention: that the places that we live become the crossroads where the poverty of the heart of man and the richness of the heart of God can encounter one another.
