Marco Iazzolino

In Italy, today is the fourth day that there is a downward trend in positive cases. There is a slight breeze of relief in the houses combined with the fatigue of an increasingly tiring daily life to manage. The news of the death of the loved ones is approaching and seems almost to envelop the doors of the houses, to lap, touching, destroying, or bringing lights of hope. All this happens slowly. As if space, time, and the world of emotions were taking on different and unknown forms. One cannot see the body. You can’t cry praying beside it. One cannot celebrate mourning because everything is lost in an undefinable time.

Slowness frightens us and prolongs the anxiety of a future that seems to have no end date. How to “live” to all this? If we rediscover the roots of the word slowness, that is “something that adapts, that does not break because it is flexible enough to soothe.” We understand the answer, perhaps. To slow down means to increase the possibility of “healing, adapting, being flexible.” Those of us who are not touched by the virus can contribute to the healing of the world, perhaps merely by slowing down. Today’s Gospel helps us to understand that we are part of a history that we must not be “in a hurry to possess.” We taste slowness. Courage!