At
the school of the Mother, the Church learns to become every day "handmaid of
the Lord," to be ready to go to encounter situations of greatest need, to be
caring toward the small and the excluded. But we are all called to live the
service of charity in ordinary life, that is, in the family, in the parish, at
work, with neighbors. It is the charity of everyday, ordinary charity.
…the
Church is the people who serve the Lord. For this, it is the people who
experiences his freedom and lives in this freedom that He gives. The Lord
always gives true freedom. First of all, the freedom from sin, from selfishness
in all its forms: the freedom to give of oneself and to do so with joy, like
the Virgin of Nazareth, who is free from herself, she does not close in on
herself in her condition – and she would have had reason! – but thinks of those
who, in that moment, has greater need. She is free in the freedom of God, which
is realized in love. And this is the freedom that God has given us and we must
not lose it: the freedom to adore God, to serve God and to serve him even in
our brothers and sisters.
This
is the freedom that, by the grace of God, we experience in the Christian
community, when we put ourselves at each other’s service, without jealousy,
without taking sides, without chatter… Serving one another. Serving! Then the
Lord frees us from ambition and rivalry, which undermine unity and communion.
He frees us from distrust, sadness — look, this sadness is dangerous because it
casts us down. It casts us down. It’s dangerous. Be careful. He frees us from
fear, internal emptiness, isolation, regret, and complaints. Even in our communities,
in fact, there is no shortage of negative attitudes that make people
self-referential, more concerned with defending themselves than with giving of
themselves. But Christ frees us from this existential grayness…
