“I dream of planting a large garden in front of the cathedral, a garden in which you young people may congregate in the evening, where girls and boys of different cultures may accept each other’s differences as a gift and a responsibility, where you young people, together with the adults, elderly and children of the city, may cultivate the virtues of justice, beauty and brotherhood”. That is the “dream” of Bishop Flavio Roberto Carraro of Verona, who has written an Easter letter to the young. The bishop derives inspiration for his letter from the gospel episode of the meeting with the Lord at Emmaus, when, on the evening of Easter, the disciples left Jerusalem and went out to a little village on the outskirts of the city. “Accepting to walk together writes the bishop in his letter means learning how to accept each other’s differences. Accepting to go to the outskirts means abandoning one’s own self as the exclusive centre of truth and finding in the other person, in the relationship and meeting with others the space in which the Truth is revealed”. Then, Msgr. Carraro opens another page of the Gospel in which John tells how he ran to the tomb of Jesus together with Peter. John, the younger of the two, arrived at the tomb first, but stopped to await Peter, because he wanted him to enter first. “And like John you too wish that I should enter first. For I have the responsibility of strengthening you in this journey of faith and of hope. I the bishop and you the youth of this Church: both of us disciples of one and the same Master. Together we have believed, because together we have accepted the risk of going to the outskirts, of posing questions about the meaning of life, of praying, of opening ourselves to wonder and hastening towards the resurrection, and life”.
