What 2021 taught us and my best wishes for 2022
Sister Anna Monia Alfieri's notebook
How wonderful! The end of the year and the beginning of the new one are always colored for me with positivity and renewed light. The budgets of the past time are made, the future one is planned. We rejoice in the good accomplished, we try, in some way, to make up for the omitted good. Always good, however, it is.
These are the days we are experiencing that must be lived to the fullest, trying to identify all those opportunities that present themselves to us to do something beautiful, for ourselves and for others.
Of course it is not a simple age that we are experiencing but, frankly, what was it? Do we want to compare our times with the years of lead? With the trenches of the Great War? Perhaps, and I say this with the utmost respect for all those who in these two years have suffered from the illness or death of their loved ones, we must stop thinking that we are unfortunate and think positively.
In my opinion, we need to rediscover a typically human dimension, that of hope. In this regard, I always like to recall Dante's definition of it in canto XXV of Paradise: "Spene", I said, "it is a certain expectation / of future glory, which produces / divine grace and previous merit ".
Even those who do not believe can live hope fully: in fact it is directly connected with the life of each of us. Life always surprises us because, however much we can plan, plan, sign agreements and compromises, the unexpected arrives in front of which we have no alternatives: we just face it.
This is what we did with Covid which, among other things, made us rediscover another important positive dimension of human life, long forgotten, namely the dimension of fraternity. In fact, we found ourselves all brothers, all placed in the same situation, all called to live the same feelings. Hope and fraternity: two typically human dimensions that become a key to understanding the era we are living in. Let's not forget them.
To be honest, we have also rediscovered another feeling, namely fear. For decades we thought that nothing could scare us, the magnificent and progressive fates had dazzled us, made us feel unbeatable. Instead we began to get scared. Only this fear has taken a bad turn: the fear of the other, if he is not equipped with an FFP2 mask.
The fear that makes us discover ourselves is positive, the fear that becomes a challenge to face is constructive, but the fear of the other must be repudiated, because it can only lead society to self-destruction.
If man is by nature a social being, he cannot be afraid of his fellow man. If man was born to live in society, he cannot fear those who, like him, constitute that society.
I wondered, then, what 2021 has taught us that it is about to leave us. Here are the answers I have given myself. I offer them to everyone to try to offer a contribution on the basis of which to start again.
2021 taught us that, to get out of an unprecedented pandemic, you need competence, courage, credibility, qualities that have demolished the castle built on ignorance, saccenza, arrogance, which had dragged the country into maddening populism. Et descendit pluvia, et venerunt flumina, et flaverunt twenty et irruerunt in domum illam, et cecidit, et fuit ruina eius magna
2021 taught us that true liberals are consistent with their thinking, whatever the cost, capable of suspending judgment, guaranteeing but, above all, capable of asking that great values, such as freedom of expression, teaching and educational freedom, must be guarded against the monopoly of single thought.
2021 taught us that political transversality is possible and must be pursued with generosity by the citizens who, in this way, obtain the defense of the interests of the community and not of the individual party.
2021 taught us that institutional generosity is needed to serve a country, a people, a nation, as Premier Draghi and Minister Bianchi teach us. Premier Draghi, let us remember, said a few days ago that he was simply a man, a grandfather in the service of the institutions. Free accepistis, free dates.
2021 made us experience that there are men and women of the institutions, in the various camps, capable of feeling at the service … You don't use your role, you don't claim a seat in exchange for everything you have done. Cardinal Ottaviani, the last Prefect of the Holy Office, used to say, with all the disarming genuineness of the son of a Trastevere baker: “Serve the Church, don't use it”. Words that can be used in any field.
How can we not think, then, of President Mattarella who, during his seven-year term, served the country with foresight, science and competence.
What has always struck me about the President has been that he is simple and capable of going beyond criticism and accusations. Never a word of vindication, never a word of arrogance that would make politicians, but also citizens, weigh his discomfort or his malaise; in his way of doing all of us have understood that institutions are an enormous value that must be served and service becomes a habitus, not a disposable.
So looking at President Mattarella and thinking about the institutions, looking at the President of the Senate Casellati and thinking about the ways of parliamentary democracy, looking at Premier Draghi and thinking about a country that contributes to a more just Europe is something natural and, above all, encouraging for the 2022.
So let's look at the restart of the school, the elections for the President of the Republic, the funds of the PNRR: three issues that interest citizens who no longer want to be considered bearers of needs but protagonists of a new social welfare.
I sincerely thank all the central and local institutions, which kept their sails hoisted during the storm, all the political class that generously accepted the country's call to unite to get out of a historical crisis. I hope that competence, credibility and courage, together with this generosity, inspire the political class in the upcoming institutional choices.
Happy New Year!
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/che-cosa-ci-ha-insegnato-il-2021-e-miei-auguri-per-il-2022/ on Fri, 31 Dec 2021 16:46:57 +0000.