Believe in the love of our neighbour

I find this the greatest challenge of every moment! All signs point to my neighbour no loving me and yet I must believe in his/her love for me because s/he is God’s gift of love for me! Yesterday I assisted in a service of reconciliation run by the volunteers of GB. It was a good occasion for me to ask for forgiveness offering my life to Jesus on the Cross.  

(…)An expression of this mutual love is reciprocal forgiveness that drives us to get up every morning and see one another completely “new”, forgetting the defects seen the day before!

This pact of mutual love is essential for me! So I forget what is gone before and start afresh in this way we have always the presence of Jesus amongst us. We live the relationships of the Trinity. 

The culture of trust (Emmaus' talk in Belfast)

Undoubtedly, though, trials come and always will as long as we are on this earth. This is why we have always before us, as our model, the figure of Jesus crucified in that moment when he had the terrible feeling that the Father himself had abandoned him and he cried out: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mt 27:46). However he did not stop in that abyss of sorrow. Saying: "Into your hands, Father, I commend my spirit" (Lk 23:46), he went beyond it and gained the Resurrection while procuring for all of us communion with God and with one another.

Who more than He might have doubted the love of God and judged the behaviour of criminals? Yet he continued to believe in the Father and to love humanity. Here is the model of a culture of trust that creates communion. Even when he didn't see the positive, he believed, he trusted, he loved.

Abandoned on the Cross, Jesus is the figure of the broken, the betrayed. He is fearful, confused, asking "why?". Yet to all who see themselves like him and are willing to share his fate with him, he becomes: for those in despair, hope; for those betrayed, loyalty; for those who have failed, victory; for the fearful, courage; for the sad: joy; for all who are uncertain, security, for the disheartened, trust.

So, in every suffering he is with me! Also in the pain of letting go, of not being involved, of seeing something done differently. Jesus on the cross is with me in all these things I mistake God’s Opera for my Opera! I have to believe in the love of the other, once I do that, there will be a culture of trust. What a revolution! Let's do it every morning see each other new!