Sr Jessi Schivalocchi
“Jesus looked at him and loved him” (Mk 10: 21)
We have now entered the phase two of the recovery plan from the Covid 19 pandemic. Slowly we are going out again, we do again all that used to fill and colour our days up to some months ago, and I wonder: are we simply going back to what was familiar or else is it a new beginning? Perhaps, we are meant to notice what is new in this taking up again our usual activities. It makes me think of Easter, because on Easter we celebrate a passage! A passage takes us from one place/situation to another one, which is completely new and needs to be discovered, and, therefore, it implies a new beginning.
Where am I, where are we in this discovery?
I want to share with you a small experience I just had.
After spending the last three months inside our “Casa Famiglia Gregorio Antonelli”, in Terracina, a shelter for disadvantaged children, I finally went out …
“This afternoon I went out on an errand for one of our children …
I did not have much time, but I took few minutes for a short stroll, breathe in the new atmosphere and rediscover what I missed in the last few months…
There were not many people around … yet someone was there!
Nobody looked at me, nobody seemed to notice me …
I walked looking around, reflecting and letting my heart feel!
Then, an encounter, the only one in my short outing …
a man, perhaps from India.
We did not speak from behind our face masks, yet, just for few seconds our eyes met, and I was sure: he smiled!
I smiled too, trying to communicate all the joy his smile brought to my heart.
I knew it already and now I am even more convinced: gazing at one another is enough!
It is difficult, very difficult, I know, yet at this particular time we have the opportunity to learn to look in each other’s eyes and show the beauty which is in us.
Dear friends, this is the time to have true and deep encounters, which will not offer us just a name to remember once we are back home, but also the colour of and the spark in the eyes of those we meet.
