All the human frailties that make mutual understanding, loyal and sincere communication, harmony that respects the diversity of experiences and thoughts difficult, can be healed by love.
Some concrete and coherent behaviors are needed in order to be able to realize the project of universal brotherhood as true brothers and sisters; put our skills back into circulation; caring for each other, sharing our deepest aspirations; welcome each other without judgement, offering and receiving mercy and forgiveness; foster trust and listening. These are choices entrusted to our freedom and which sometimes require the courage to be a "sign of contradiction" towards the current mentality.
For this reason it is important to encourage each other in this commitment, so as not to falter and to always be able to cherish and joyfully bear witness to the inestimable value of unity and peace.
Chiara Lubich says that “building peace requires a strong love, capable of loving even those who do not reciprocate, capable of forgiving, of overcoming the category of the enemy, of loving the homeland of others as one's own [...] It still requires from us a new heart and eyes to love and see in everyone as many candidates for universal brotherhood”.
“Evil comes from the heart of man”, wrote Igino Giordani, e “to remove the danger of war it is necessary to remove the spirit of aggression, exploitation and selfishness from which war comes: it is necessary to rebuild a conscience”.
How to implement all this? How to rebuild a conscience oriented towards love?
Bonita Park is a neighborhood in Hartswater, a farming town in South Africa. As in the rest of the country, the effects inherited from the Apartheid regime persist, especially in the educational field: the scholastic skills of young people belonging to black and mixed-race groups are much lower than those of other ethnic groups, with the consequent risk of social marginalization. “The Bridge” project was created to create mediation between the different ethnic groups of the neighborhood, bridging distances and cultural differences, with the creation of an after-school program and a small shared space: a meeting place between different cultures, for children and teenagers.
To everyone's great joy and surprise, the community shows a great desire to work together: Carlo offers his old pickup truck to fetch the wood used to make the desks, and the principal of the nearest primary school offers shelves, notebooks and books, while the Dutch Reformed Church donates fifty chairs. Everyone tries to do their part to build new relationships between everyone, an indispensable condition for building bridges between different cultures and ethnic groups.
What happened in Hartswater could happen anywhere, if we were able to create "new meeting spaces" where we live, where we can experience a constructive dialogue between everyone, working together, to offer positive responses to humanity that still suffers from inequalities, prejudices, and is still unable to overcome "the category of the enemy" or remove "the spirit of aggression".
In this way we will create true peace laboratories where we can see "that strong love" at the basis of every concrete action.