15 Ιουνίου 2016

Because they know in advance the great effort required for the journey, the big birds that migrate to warmer countries show great love and bear on their wings any smaller ones they come across. But they’re often verbally attacked by chickens whose eyes are puffy from all the filth they scratch around in every day, to the extent that they can’t see straight, the poor things. It would be in such people’s best interests to take a pair of scissors to their tongues rather than go to Hell, since they find it so hard to keep their mouths zipped.

Blessed ‘whys’. It’s a question that’s so common, so profound, so powerful in its expression and so difficult to answer. It’s a question that’s so true, so human, so demanding, but one which, by its nature, is difficult to deal with in words, it’s not expressed through the mouth, it doesn’t fit into words, it’s not something to express in front of an audience, much less is it answerable by single words from people supposedly in the know to others who are patently suffering. It may be the outstanding issue on which there can’t and shouldn’t be any speeches. It’s too deep for us ever to be truly aware of it. It’s too painful to for us to countenance as bearable. ...

In this way, hospitality avoids the danger, the anomaly of favouritism and shows it to be a veritable sea of compassion. If you love your brother, you love the stranger. In any case, as Saint Basil the Great notes: «there is one nature, both this person and that are people. There is one poverty, one penury for both of them. Give to your brother and to the stranger. Do not turn away from your brother, but also make your foreign brother familiar. You should see straight. Do not prefer your friend over the stranger when it comes to dealing with their poverty… We are all related, all brothers, children of the same Father. If you look for your spiritual father, ...