The Subway Church

 How sad it would be to go alone in life, when we are meant to be a joyful crowd going up together towards the House of the Lord!

We may be every day surrounded by people; but this happens also in a bus, or in the metro. You are still alone. Everybody around you might even be pressing on you, but this does not make you feel accompanied, or safe. Nobody truly “touches” you (cf. Mark 5:30-31). In the subway we hide ourselves, we protect ourselves. If we have money, we try to keep it close to our body, even inside our jacket, close to our heart. Our face is a “nothing-face,” one that both puts distance and says that everything is OK… even when, deep inside, we may be full of sadness, anxieties, or maybe joys, dreams. But people in the subway are not the ones with whom we can share those things. If you do not protect yourself in a subway, you remain exposed. Exposed perhaps to questions: “What's wrong with you, bro?” Exposed to be robbed of what you love the most…

There is some communication in the subway. There is politeness. You can talk about the weather. If someone asks you a question, for directions or something simple, then you smile and respond. But usually this is as far as it gets. Is this what life is about?

Life is not meant to be a subway. We need someone with whom to share our dreams, our sadness, our joys and our anxieties. We need a place to be real. We need someone to listen to our cry. And we need to be open to people. When we walk in life, our wallet cannot be so close to our chest that we cannot reach out and give to someone in need. Our face cannot be so distant that it doesn't give someone suffering the confidence to approach us and ask for help. In life, we cannot talk just about the weather, or about what happens outside.

I imagine that the world, and the Church, are meant to be something like a hospital in which everybody is both a doctor and a patient. You cannot play so much the victim that you think of yourself as someone who cannot give healing and joy to someone else. And you cannot play so much the doctor that you fool yourself into thinking that you do not need anything from anyone. We all are sick: this is why we need each other. But we all are doctors as well, and that's why we need to love each other. And the mystery is, you are a good doctor when your own wounds become a remedy for other patients: sometimes, in the form of empathy and compassion, other times, because allowing others to heal us is the best way to heal them from their own sense of unworthiness, other times… Let’s talk about it another time! But remember what St. Peter said: “By His wounds you have been healed” (1 Peter 2:24).