An increasingly aggressive society populated by lost and disoriented young people

School, society, policy

AN INCREASINGLY AGGRESSIVE SOCIETY POPULATED WITH LOST AND DISORIENTATED YOUNG PEOPLE

Young people today need responsible adults, especially if the latter are public figures. The scar to the President of the PD, Elly Schlein, in Viterbo with a swastika, the upside down images of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Minister Giuseppe Valditara, these are very serious episodes that cannot and must not leave us indifferent.

Author
Anna Monia Alfieri, I.M.
Knight of the Italian Republic

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A renewed concern, another episode, yet another, of offense, this time against the secretary of the PD, Elly Schlein, in Viterbo. The solidarity that has come from all the political forces is certainly positive. I too express my solidarity with this young woman who today represents the many who have seen in her the person to trust. For some time I have been experiencing with some concern the violent tones of the political dispute which lead to the many episodes of violence against the various personalities of politics. Episodes, the ones I'm referring to, which seem to bring back the nefarious ideologies that sowed death and destruction throughout the twentieth century. And not only. How not to be able to think of the concentration camps and their horror: the surviving Jews have helped us understand the horrors of Nazism and Fascism. How to forget, on the other front, the dark period of the sinkholes, the Italians killed by Tito soldiers for the mere fact of being Italian and therefore, in the eyes of Tito, fascists. Or how not to think about the gulags of Siberia. Aberrant pages of human history, perhaps the worst. And again the anarchy with the violence with which it manifested itself. These are ideologies from which all our political forces, clearly and decisively, they distanced themselves.

 

 

We have to, At that time, everyone, today, take a step forward in responsibility. I know young people and our young people are those of the post covid who have lived through a difficult period that has sown fear in them, loss, with the consequent widespread abuse of psychotropic drugs to manage anxiety, not to think, to sleep, to get away from reality, abuse of psychopharmaceuticals and alcohol that make our children lose their lives. Just a few days ago a girl died in Monza. Equally worrying is the phenomenon of those young people who press their foot on the accelerator and lose their lives crashing into a tree: it's not just shenanigans but a desperate need to push boundaries in order to feel alive. Where are the adults in all of this? Where were they before the covid? Where I am now?

Here these young people need responsible adults today, especially if the latter are public figures. Florence events, Bologna, of Turin are alarm bells that all politicians, as someone involved in communication, they cannot ignore. Similarly the disfigurement to the President of the PD, Elly Schlein, in Viterbo with a swastika, the puppet of the Prime Minister, the images upside down of the President Giorgia Meloni and of the Minister Giuseppe Valditara, with the cross over his eyes, in Milan, these are very serious episodes that cannot and must not leave us indifferent.

I appeal, so, again and in a heartfelt way to the political class: let's protect our young people from the squares, let us not neglect these manifestations, the risk of losing control of these phenomena is really high. Let us remember that politics is "the highest form of charity", as Saint Paul VI defined it, the other is an adversary, not an enemy. Politicians must and know how to discuss ideas and ideas do not need violence to assert themselves. I have had the honor of knowing many politicians for years, belonging to all political forces, and I have always appreciated his capacity for dialogue and constructive confrontation in Parliament. I hardly ever witnessed violent arguments, on the contrary, I appreciated the frank and honest confrontation. We have all suffered, in the recent past, for the squares of the "vaffa" who used and abused the malaise of many citizens, riding and exasperating discontent. Today the risk of physical and virtual squares, with the continuous and piercing reference to the ghosts of the past, can do much worse damage. Let's stop first.

Despite these worrying signs, I have great faith that the situation can evolve with a decisive change towards a sense of responsibility and institutional loyalty. We still have many, young and old, politicians, of the associations, of the culture that make their calm voice heard, respectful and responsible. We need them, Today more than ever, we need meekness, that virtue that knows how to defend one's ideas in a firm but respectful way. So I invite the myths to emerge, to make a difference, to continue to make the beautiful history of our country. «Beati i miti, because they will inherit the earth» [Mt 5, 5].

 

Milan, 12 March 2023

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The Fathers of the Island of Patmos

 

 

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Gabriele Giordano M. Scardocci
Of the Order of Preachers
Presbyter and Theologian

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Father Gabriele

The man of liquid society at the well of living water with the Samaritan woman

Homiletics of the Fathers of The Island of Patmos

THE MAN OF THE LIQUID SOCIETY AT THE WELL OF LIVING WATER WITH THE SAMARITAN WOMAN

“Water is condescending, mobile, transparent, tasteless. One easily gets the impression that, compared to the rest of reality, it is somehow otherworldly".

 

Author:
Gabriele Giordano M. Scardocci, o.p.

 

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Dear Readers of The Island of Patmos,

who plays sports such as football, the basket or the run, especially in summer, knows how refreshing a glass of water is at the end of a sporting activity. It almost has a profound meaning that goes beyond the somatic aspect. As the scientist Philip Ball writes:

“Water is condescending, mobile, transparent, tasteless. One easily gets the impression that, compared to the rest of reality, it is somehow otherworldly".

 

 

The long song the today's gospel it's an invitation. It is a return to the sources, to the water of our origins: therefore to rediscover our baptismal vocation, because from that moment we started walking in the path of holiness and accepting our vocation. Therefore, returning to remember baptism is returning to the sources of our faith and quenching our thirst with the water of grace and the Holy Spirit.

At the beginning of the dialogue between Jesus and the Samaritan woman, it is the Lord who asks a precise question: “Give me a drink.” Jesus is thirsty because he is in a barren desert area. It's very hot and it's near a well. So try to make friends with the Samaritan woman, asking for practical help. In fact, offer some water, for the culture of the time, it was really a gesture of closeness and also that allowed to generate a certain companionship.

This gesture surpasses the Samaritan woman: Jesus is also close to us. The Lord asks all of us to offer him water, Also today, especially every time we pray and enter into communion with him in the Eucharist. He thirsts for our presence, our friendship and our faith. He says to us give me a drink, to indicate that he wants to relate and have an intimacy with us.

Returning to the letter of the text, we see that the exchange between the two begins. A few sentences later it is He who offers the water to the woman:

“Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again; but who will drink of the water that I will give them, he will never be thirsty again. On the contrary, the water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life".

The Samaritan woman must not have understood this sentence well. They are strong words and very intense. After all, Jesus is telling her not to draw only on water drawn from the well that quenches the thirst of the body and the dry throat, but to drink from a source that also quenches the soul and spirit. This is the water of faith and grace.

We too have been quenched by this water. Effectively, if we think about it, our life of faith began with a little’ of water, a white robe and a candle of light. On the day of our baptism, the material element used to administer the Sacrament of the beginning of the life of faith is precisely water. This water accompanies the words of the priest «I baptize you in the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit". Baptismal water is also a sign of a great event: received the divine grace received which has entered into us by uniting itself to our life and to our person. And together with God, from that moment to follow, we can do great works of charity and love.

Jesus offers us faith and grace in baptism because we can discover that we are all a great gift to God himself and to the world. For our personal and unique love to become a concrete action of tenderness and compassion towards those who suffer.

We ask the Lord to still feel that baptismal newness in our lives, to rediscover ourselves as children in soul and spirit, to quench our time with the presence of God and to irrigate the desert of a contemporary world afflicted by an increasingly liquid culture with wells of hope.

Amen.

Santa Maria Novella in Florence, 12 March 2023

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The Fathers of the Island of Patmos

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