Conference of Camillian Family held on June 9, 2001

By Gianluigi Valtorta in Vita Nostra, Year LII, no.3, July-September 2001, pp.354-369.

When I was entrusted with the task of preparing this reflection, the first title I proposed was “From the listening of the Word of God to the listening of the word of the sick”. God and the sick, therefore, are the points of reference. The listening of both is the experience to be lived. The word of one and the other is the object on which to direct the listening. The movement from one reference to another, is to suppose, perhaps, that the first one gives light and orientation to the other.

Trying to interpret the original proposal, I considered appropriate, with a new title – Listening: From the heart to the hands – to focus on the experience of listening and highlight its specific nature.

The horizon, however, is the original one. It is the sick – the person who suffers – who is the interlocutor of listening. The dynamism with which this experience is lived, or it is hoped that it be lived, takes the form and substance from that listening which becomes normative for those who want to live the experience of trust, of hope, of love.

The purpose of our reflection is to become aware of the importance and scope of the experience of listening in our meetings with people in difficulty. What happens, or better, what can we do to make happen, when we live listening in a certain way? Not only “awareness”, but also the desire and the will to refine and develop our capacity to listen, together with, perhaps the unpredictable discovery, of the fruits it produces.

Finally, the perspective with which we try to read our topic. It has an exquisitely spiritual content. That is: the Christian experience, understood as living encounter with Christ, as listening to the Spirit that lives in us and as assumption of unifying and decisive attitudes that orient the choices we are called to express for giving precise meaning to what we do.

This premise serves to understand the direction we intend to take. What follows will present, in simplicity, invitations to reflect, impulses and sometimes provocations to make and live this qualitative “passage” – “From the heart to the hands” – which gives a deep meaning to the true attention we give to those who are sick and in need.

CONTINUA QUI