Dear Alberto, I don't quite know how things work up there, but I like to imagine that somewhere in the celestial Jerusalem there must be a large, comfortable balcony from which - I can't tell whether in turns or all together - you, blessed, angels and saints, you can look out to scrutinize the entire panorama of our tiny terrestrial globe from above. You will certainly remember having encountered in the Divine Comedy - when you attended the "Giulio Cesare" Liceo Classico here in Rimini - that verse in which the great poet describes the earth, framed in the distance from the sky, as "the flowerbed that makes us so ferocious". I think that, if Dante were writing his divine poem today, he would certainly use the same expression, but he would be forced to change the metaphor of the flowerbed. In fact, the global village of the third millennium not only no longer resembles an enchanting garden, but if anything brings to mind a ferocious jungle, which moreover, and above all because of the devastating environmental degradation, is a dirty and uninhabitable planet, an increasingly less "world" and increasingly "in-world", in short, a gigantic garbage heap, anything but a flowery and verdant flowerbed!
In fact today on earth the rate of violence compared to the remote past of centuries ago, but also compared to the near past of the years of your earthly existence, has increased dramatically, exponentially. You knew the horrors of the Second World War, you were terrified by the massacre of the Holocaust, by the atomic bombs on Japan. Then, as you know, there was a progressive escalation of civil and colonial wars. Every day, as many as 26 children die of hunger and infectious diseases, 1 every three seconds, and in Rimini alone there are over 800 abortions every year, on average more than 2 a day.
Today the violence is global. Three of the largest multinationals are exporters of drugs, weapons and prostitution. And they are fueled by the world's immense poverty and inequality, which drives farmers all over the planet to grow cocaine, heroin, and forces millions of women and children to put their organs up for sale. A few weeks ago we recalled September 11, 2001, when this violence exploded before our eyes. That day violence entered our homes.
But there is more and worse. When our brothers and sisters in the Democratic Republic of Congo suffer from war, it connects to Western countries that sell weapons for diamonds. The deaths of millions of people from AIDS are linked to the resistance of pharmaceutical companies to produce cheaper versions that allow the poor to buy them. After all, an hour of chaos in the traffic, the queue at the crowded counter, the metropolitan news, the tiggì on the ambushes in Kabul, Darfur or Chechnya make us aware of this.
So I ask myself: what does it mean for us Christians of the third millennium to make the gospel of the third beatitude resound: "Blessed are the meek, because they will inherit the earth?". What did Jesus mean by extolling the bliss of meekness? Meek, peaceful, meek are the humble and the poor in the Bible who have neither the will nor the means to take justice into their own hands. Jesus is the prototype of these myths, to the point of being able to exclaim: "Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart". In his time Palestine was traversed by tremors of zealot violence towards the rich classes of the place and towards the Roman rulers . Zealots and assassins were the Taliban of the time. However, Jesus resolutely refused any solicitation in this sense: he fled when they came to make him king, to put him at the head of an armed resistance movement (Jn 6,15:26,52). To Peter, in Gethsemane, he said: "Put your sword back into its sheath, for whoever wounds by the sword will perish by the sword" (Mt 18,37:XNUMX), thus renouncing any resistance to his capture. To violence he did not oppose violence; he contrasted martyrdom, that is, testimony: "I have come into the world to bear witness to the truth" (Jn XNUMX:XNUMX).
However, we must be careful not to exploit the word of Jesus, who rejected violence in all its forms: not only violence in the reaction of the victim who suffers it, but also and even before that of the perpetrator who causes it. He has pronounced a no to vengeance by those who are hit on the cheek, but before that he has shouted a much more terrible no to the violence of those who hit on the cheek.
Dear Alberto, help me now to read this beatitude of meekness with some passages from that fifth gospel, represented by your life.
In the aftermath of WWII, you wrote:
«Man has lost the sense of his own dignity, he forgets the value of life. Too much violence, a consequence of the war. Examples of German concentration camps, examples in everyday practical life: murders, thefts, violence, robberies, threats, rampant and prevailing immorality. Return to the Christian and human principles of brotherhood. It is not with the sword that questions are resolved, nor with violence.
But you knew well that to overcome evil outside of oneself with good, one must defeat violence within oneself. In your diary you noted:
«I absolutely have to overcome my outbursts of impatience, and instead use loving patience and ardent charity with everyone. Before acting I have to think about what I'm doing, and I also have to consider how I would have behaved in such an occasion. I absolutely have to give up the habit of judging my neighbor, if I don't want to be judged by God" (September 18, 1938).
And here is how one of your most faithful disciples, our most legendary and beloved Don Fausto Lanfranchi, described you:
“He has a strong personality; serious and affable, reflective and at the same time cordially expansive; sincere, generous, always serene and optimistic; he laughs and jokes willingly; sweet of manners; "You can't argue with him". Always attentive to others and ready to highlight their merits. Humble, not argumentative, able to warmly defend his convictions, but alien to any attitude of haughty judgement, ready instead to help everyone. Above all, what strikes him is his clear and at the same time penetrating and deep, good gaze, which distinguishes him from all the other young people. A look that seems to see inside, not to judge, if anything to help>>.
But you've never been a naive do-gooder or a candid softie. You couldn't stand abuse or violence, especially if it offends the faith. You believed that if there is aggression, you have to defend yourself and repress it. You had strong arms, but the impetus of your heart was stronger in defending your meek and most sweet Lord. Your biographer tells you that one Saturday, as usual, you returned from Bologna. They told you that some youngsters had done what they had been bragging about for some time: destroyed the picture of the Sacred Heart that was in the Catholic Action room. You proposed to teach them a good lesson and in the meantime you immediately put up another picture. The following Saturday, while you were with your companions in the church square, they said to you: “Here they are! They're passing by on the street now." Quickly you took off your jacket, approached them with words and pounced on them with a good deal of punches "so that you learn never to do these things again!".
Dear Alberto, I don't know if you will have gone to confession afterwards because of that excess of zeal. However I think you passed the test of heroic human and Christian virtues in the canonical process at the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, because they must have interpreted that rather warm gesture as a legitimate defense of your helpless good Lord.
Now in conclusion, let me get back to our today. Today meekness is a "silent" word in current language, as are the sister words: humility, gentleness, tolerance, patience. Our time could be defined as the season of the scream, as can be deduced from television lounges, from newspaper headlines, from heated political debates. Goodbye tolerance, non-violence, goodbye dialogue. The winner is always right and the strongest always wins. Mostly it is thought that mildness and kindness are valid only within the precincts of churches. Outside, on the other hand, we have to come to terms with reality, and then it's a completely different music, or rather it's all – you don't whisper – but screams and shouts, continuous struggle, ruthless urban warfare. But what worries and regrets is that even in our house a sort of fear of meekness has even infected the churches. It has come to think that strong muscles are needed even among Christians of the same parish, among Catholics of different alignments. People shout "W the Pope!", but how many know how to imitate the disarming sweetness of Benedict XVI, who knows how to rhyme so well severity with amiability and firmness with calmness?
Dear Alberto, allow me a recommendation: pay special attention to our young Christians. Help them grow vigorous without ever becoming violent, kind without ever becoming compliant, patient without ever becoming either indignant or resigned. Ask your almighty and ours, most lovable Jesus to obtain for each and every one of them the grace of a meek fortress and a strong meekness.
I hug you.
Yours, from the heart
