✝ 2084:☆CHRISTIAN AGE And Memories Of The Old World (English and Italian) ✝

Chapter 3

(English version)

-Exceptis: "... In the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."

-G: "Amen!"

-Exceptis: "I watched you while you were praying. You have stared the crucifix, just like I did at your age. "

-G: "It is a way to feel closer to the Lord, to confide my thoughts reminding me always what He has done for us. Am I wrong? "

-Exceptis: "No, absolutely. It's right what you said. The crucifix is ​​the symbol of our life, it is the mirror of the personality of every human being. It unites us as men, because we all suffer in life.

-G: "Was not this simple concept enough to convince the men of that time to follow the path of the Lord?"

-Exceptis: "It's simple, it's true, but it's not easy for everyone to accept it. It was a society that aimed to make the life of men idle, spoiled and facilitated throughout. We liked to be hypocritical and full of false pity in the face of suffering, but hardly anyone rolled up his sleeves; this because suffering had become an obscure element, alien to life, which seemed to be in contrast with it. A real "mistake" to be eliminated in any way. While the Lord made it his throne, for us it was a cause of curse towards destiny, and not a push towards redemption.

-G: "The message of the Cross is not simple, I understand this. But returning to the question I asked you earlier ... for example, how were you trying to express this concept to those who did not believe?

-Exceptis: "It was very difficult" to reason "with the unbelievers, as they were the champions of rationality, and it was very easy to get carried off the road and get entangled in endless talks. So I always tried to act, first of all. I remember there was not a crucifix in my classroom, so I tried to get one. When I asked the caretaker, he made a stunned face that makes me laugh every time I think about it. So I brought one from home and hung it where I wanted it to be. Certainly not because I wanted to "impose my faith", as many said, but because I had another conception of secularism. Being a lay person also means tolerating the beliefs of others, and since most of the students had none, I did exactly like them. I practiced my faith, as they did, exhibiting their "nothing" in which they believed. If I had been prevented I would have had proof that the school was atheist, not secular. However, in the end almost no one opposed me, some mocked me and made jokes, but it was entirely a script. The Gospel teaches that the servant is not greater than his master; if then Jesus Christ was scourged and crucified for me, for everyone, I could have easily endured some giggles.

-G: "You had courage, grandfather. I do not know how I would have behaved. You had a faith and a tenacity that I probably would not have had. Consider that now every school has a large crucifix on the entrance, above the Italian flag, and for Christmas a competition is organized for those who bring the most beautiful and imaginative crib.

-Exceptis: "Ask the principal if there are school courses for those over 80 ahahahaha Doing lessons in a similar school would also be a beautiful personal victory, even if with 60 years of delay"

-G: "I will try to ask grandpa ahahaha But tell me some other situation in which you tried to witness the Word of God. You said before suffering. Why was its meaning so distorted?

-Exceptis: "I always" liked "to compare the common thought of those years to the Nazi one, for a simple reason. There was an impressive level of selectivity: in all areas and in every form. Advertising and social media told you that you had to be beautiful, healthy, robust and maybe even rich. So the others, automatically, would have been mocked, excluded and marginalized. This mechanism was also valid and above all for the weakest. Those for which I was beating, going beyond that pharaoh disguised by humaneness, were especially the sick (especially the terminal ones), and the unwanted children. Another social problem was in fact that of euthanasia. Fortunately, here in Italy the situation was not as critical as in other countries, but this phenomenon hid a disquieting ideological veil that was spreading like wildfire; statements such as "that is not life" were just the tip of the iceberg. We wanted to completely desacralize life, conceiving it as a good in relation only to its "quality", not to the simple fact of existing. In some countries even the deaf and the blind were subjected to euthanasia, up to the depressed and the simple elderly. A lethal hoarding of one's life by man, who would decide when to put an end to it. Thus only the strongest would have survived and would have been subjected and assimilated more easily to common thought.In any case, I have always tried to testify, but never to judge those who made this difficult choice, and I respected them and prayed for them as suffering men, who would present themselves before the Lord. And so I did also with the mothers of the aborted children. Abortion was the simplest and cheapest choice to make, rather than investing to help women not to have an abortion. A "Marshall plan for pregnancies" could have saved millions of lives. But who cared?