A letter to Speranza, shared with the families and young people of her neighborhood. At the Padre Annibale Village in Bordonaro, Christmas smells of proximity and friendship, of welcome and inclusion. Father Giuseppe Di Stefano parish priest of the Madonna delle Lacrime community with his written words, imprinted in the hearts of each and everyone, wanted to wish a Merry Christmas like this:
“Dear hope,
a letter that begins like this sounds strange. I don’t know how many would think of writing to you, but I do. I do it to try to hold you in my hands a little, even though I know it’s impossible: no one can do it or simply try, it would be like taking away that impetus that is unique to you. You are fragile and, especially in this time when violent winds rage, it is really difficult to keep you lit. Your tender flame, always at risk of going out, how can it remain still lit, in this world of ours lashed by war, marked by ever greater injustices that divide us between the lucky and the unlucky (and the unlucky are always the same and ever more so) ?
You know, dear hope, sometimes I too struggle to believe in you and I wonder where you went. We need you, hope, everyone. As much as we insist on telling ourselves another story, we are all hungry for you, like the air. We would not like to resign ourselves to this slow death, to this asphyxiation to which we seem to be irreparably condemned. Habit and resignation seem to have taken over. We no longer know how to raise our gaze high and we are content to live with our heads down, bent over our plate, over our business, over the screen of our mobile phones.
We have become accustomed to evil, to injustice that generates disparity and fuels pockets of anger and hatred. We are inhabited by the resentment that lies within us and we are willing to do anything to have a few moments of notoriety, some opportunity for revenge on the general indifference. We are evil in the true sense of the word, prisoners of an evil that oppresses our hearts and extinguishes even the smallest attempts at insurrection. Our evil is called resignation and it is worse than the evil itself that generated it, because it deprives us of the strength, of the impetus to fight it.
We know it: evil, as well as fear of the other, of the future, of our own limits, seems to have more arguments than good and trust. And the only way to counter it is you, dear hope. It seems crazy and maybe it is, but responding to evil with hope is equivalent to saying that there is a difference between the evil itself and those who commit it; that there is always a possibility of change, of redemption even for the worst of men. This is why among the virtues, dear hope, you, however small and fragile, are the most dangerously subversive.
Infect us with you, hope. Lend us your eyes to learn to see in the obstacles, in the inevitable setbacks and even in the falls that we experience along the way, opportunities to measure ourselves against our limits, but also to get up from the ground and start again with more momentum. You, who are traditionally represented as an anchor, remind us that no storm, no night is infinite if we go through it clinging to each other. And it fuels our courage and audacity so that we can return to having big dreams and believing, betting, in the possibility of realizing them. To open ourselves to the new with renewed confidence, to build bridges rather than walls, not to fear crises and to let ourselves be provoked by them. To question ourselves in the light of the encounter with the other, without ever taking refuge in rigidity and the presumption of being self-sufficient, aware that, behind what we perceive as risks, the greatest opportunities are often hidden.
Dear hope, on this night so different from all the others and yet so the same, I imagine you in front of my window, on the windowsill of which I have the habit of leaving a light lit, a candle to remind me to keep watch. To awaken in me and those around me, the greatest dreams and desires, asleep for too long, tired of too many disappointments, forgotten who knows where, in some drawer of the heart.
And while the world, enveloped in silence, still sleeps, I will open the window of the house to let in some fresh air, which sweeps away the stench of every closure and gives me back the thrill of shivers on my skin. May it remind me that I am still alive and as long as there is life there is you, hope. That the popular saying “those who live in hope dies in despair” is not true at all, but rather the opposite is true, because without hope we cannot live.
And you, dear hope, in the biting cold of this night, are waiting for me at the window, as if lying in wait, to ambush me and make me jump again with joy and amazement. You are where I never thought I would look for you and find you. So close that I can finally touch you and let myself go to the disarming experience of your embrace. And I can put my eyes inside yours, so similar to those of nocturnal animals that know how to pierce the thickest darkness and find their way home. Listening to the sound of your voice in the insistent whimpering of a newborn, wrapped in swaddling clothes, who calms down only by sucking milk from the immature breasts of a young inexperienced mother. Your face is that of an ordinary “puppy” of a man, tender and fragile like a sprout. Your name is balm to every solitude, fulfillment to every promise, warmth of a presence that dares to challenge even death. Your name is Emmanule, God with us.”