In this land of ours” “

Son, soon you will see the light of day. For nine months I have carried you in my womb, perceiving your growth and your movements, and through me you have perceived the world, its sounds and voices, and you have already tasted some morsels of this story that is about to begin. It wasn’t you who decided to be born, but it’s you who will have to shoulder yourself out into the affairs of life: your father and I shall be at your side. It’s up to us to convince you that life is worth living. We’ll try to teach you what we ourselves have learned, but then it will be to you to come to terms with reality. It may seem an act of irresponsibility to ask someone to come into the world today: in this period it has caused me even more suffering inside me to listen to the “bad news” that fills our television news bulletins and papers; it has grieved me to see the superficiality, the arrogance, selfishness, violence, intolerance, tyranny, injustice, etc., both in the forms we encounter in our daily life and in those that afflict whole populations in this world. I don’t know, and I can’t tell you, if you will have a better future, that the men and women of this planet and this Europe, the land in which you are about to be born, will be able to heal the wounds of history. At times our history, in spite of all the cultural, scientific, technological and economic, all the forms of communication and information, at our disposal, seems not to learn from its own past; it seems bogged down in its own vices and its own limitations. But there are times, too, when, if we look more carefully, we can grasp major changes for the better and positive advances in history: I think, for example, of our Europe and the progress it has made over the last 60 years! Look how international sensitivity has grown in response to major natural disasters or to the scandal of war! Observe how people can travel all over the world to get together and experience emotional moments linked to their beliefs or to the passions that inspire their lives… So it will be hard for you to shoulder your way into a world which no longer has any certainties, in spite of the claims of science that lives at a level of heightened complexity, in spite of the fact that existence for some is enormously facilitated; that wavers between absolute individual liberties and dangerous forms of fundamentalism, radicalism and egoism; that accepts compromises and gives way to its own limits, but that then kills or marginalizes the imperfect human being. As far as your father and I are able, we will try to grasp together with you the Truth, Beauty and Goodness that, in spite of everything, inhabit this world. At times it’s not so easy to perceive it, because it is hidden in the depths of things, in people’s hearts, in events. And we will try to be, together with you, “true, “beautiful” and “good”, so that you in turn may develop by yourself what was placed in you in the image and likeness of God, together with the mysteriousness of life, and may take it with you wherever you go, recognize it and propagate it further. Don’t presume to judge reality. Don’t ever be scandalized. Don’t be frightened if your human destiny takes roads you cannot understand. Don’t deceive yourself and don’t succumb to the temptation of cynicism. Conduct yourself as a discreet guest and a wise master on this earth, and in this little space called Europe. Remember that, apart from any concrete realization, success or failure, it is the Love of God that guides history, that governs its destiny and that has over it a plan of salvation and redemption.