3. Bearing the burdens of each other

I want to express my thoughts in this regard, sharing with you an experience that I recently

read (Fran’s War).  It was written by a journalist who experienced the war in Bosnia firsthand… To communicate this experience he made it into a novel (I must confess I don’t willingly read books on “war”,  because  the reality of  “war - cold or hot” burdens my life…)

Fran is an adolescent male who is experiencing the terrible war of Bosnia…While he lists

his sufferings and those of his people, he also speaks about a friendship with a Catholic priest (Patrick) and recalls a story that he had told him.

            A soldier, after years, had finally returned from the Vietnam war and had called his parents from the airport in San Francisco, asking if he could bring home also his friend. They immediately said yes, that they would be happy to meet him; but when he added that the friend had run across a mine and that he had lost an arm and a leg, and he asked if he could host him because the friend had nowhere to go, they answered they were very sorry, and that maybe they could find him lodging somewhere. No, replied the soldier, you didn’t understood.  I want him to come live with us. Then his parents told him they were sorry, but they could not take such a burden on themselves and that he didn’t realize what it meant  to have a disabled person in the house… They were already having a hard time carrying on by themselves, without this problem.  In short, they advised him to leave his friend behind, the friends would find his own way, and they invited him to come home alone. The boy hung up the phone and the parents didn’t hear anything  more from him.

            After some days they received a phone call from the police… who informed them their son had died in suicide… Desperate, they flew to the morgue and were escorted for the identification of the body.  When they saw him and recognized him, there were shocked because they discovered what they had not in the least expected. It was he, their own son, who was the soldier without one arm and one leg…

            Bearing the burdens of each other… Dear sisters and brothers, who knows if sometimes we are not also like the parents of that boy… It is easy for us to love those who have no problems, or don’t cause us trouble and difficulty, love the brothers and sisters from the countries where we have never visited… It is easy to exclude from our care those who have been impolite to us, offended us, excluded us or not listened to us…; to follow the law of  “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”…

            Earlier I mentioned the logic of God.  I want to repeat it for me:  birth from a virgin, the scandal of the cross, the pardon of enemies… even 70 times 7 times; that is, always and in every case.  It is living this “logic” that we become “agents of the Spirit”, “servants of the Word”; “faithful and credible proclaimers of the Reign”.

            In regard to this topic, we could open the great chapter of community “discernment.” Our last General Chapter suggested discernment as the way and force for transformation in this time of pluralism, superficiality and fragmentation.  It studied its significance: gift of the Spirit for communion, certainty that the Spirit is in history and becomes present to those who seek the Spirit in humility and faith. Gift to be discovered also through the mediation of those in positions of animation and who, living it generously, know the power and joy of being accepted and loved by God; and because of this,  experience daily  the ability to accept, love and care for…

            Attilio Danese and Giulia Paola Di Nicola wrote in a recent publication:  “Each woman and each man, in the mutuality of coexistence, learn the humility of being limited, the need of recognizing themselves in each other, to respect and be respected;  to alternately be, sometimes the fullness sometimes the emptiness, sometimes the active one sometimes the passive one, sometimes the disciple sometimes the teacher… It would be harmful always to be teachers … Likewise it would be harmful to be always and only disciples, if that means to give up bringing out the hidden

treasures that each one carries within…”

            Keeping in mind what I’ve said up to here, I would now like to highlight some conditions that - in my opinion -  make up an “identikit” of an animator of an Institute or religious community and that are absolutely necessary for building a community in which communion can be a reality that is experienced and sustained by all.