01-06-2013 - Traces, n. 6

“IN THAT SQUARE, a gaze
found each of us, one by one”

Many testimonies have arrived from people who were there and saw something happen, above all within themselves. Here are three examples.

I have been a member of the CL Movement for many years and have participated many times in gatherings with the Pope. However, yesterday I had an experience I have never had before. Certainly, I was struck by the witnesses and by what Pope Francis said in response to the questions. But another thing outshone all this. When the Pope entered the Square, I was filled with an irrepressible desire to see him, to feel myself looked at and greeted by him (how well I understood Zacchaeus!). In that moment, one thing prevailed over the weariness: that man and the desire to see him and to be looked at by him. I was inexorably drawn to his presence, standing straight up to see him speak, and all the rest passed to secondary importance. This is not the first time that something like this has happened to me, but it was the first time I asked myself why it was happening. What was it that seized me to the point that it exceeded the weariness? I could give pre-packaged answers, but this time I prefer to look at what happened to me without interpreting it, letting prevail the wonder and the attraction that that mysterious Presence arouses in me every time I run into It.
Antonio Federico
           
There aren’t a lot of things to say, except that yesterday, watching Pope Francis, I saw, “with the eyes of the Apostles,” that gaze that I didn’t understand and so desired to have! While I was there in the Square, I wanted only to stay there, drawn by that Incarnation of Christ and by His presence and by His words. I understood then that I never want to leave Him–“Where would I go, without You?” And today is no longer like yesterday, as I have the constant desire for Him, like someone in love. I am experiencing what I had so long prayed for: His Presence here alongside me now.
Giovanna

Can one be moved to tears by the first question of the Spiritual Exercises? “But when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on earth?” For me, now, in the circumstances in which I find myself, in daily life, if He arrived now, what faith would He find in me? What would He find? A glad gaze, an alert heart, someone who wants to stay with Him, someone who has an infinite need to be looked at and loved? This powerful and totalizing question gives me no respite. It delves deep, and I discover I am grateful that this questioning should happen. I am surprised to realize that I can no longer stay in the simple yet dramatic reality of my life without realizing it, in the things that are hard for me, be they relationships, work, worries, or in the beautiful things that happen–a vacation with friends, a blue sky, a complement. There is something that comes before, something that prevails, which is that Presence that responds to the need of living. This Presence holds the meaning to everything here, and it is everything. The beginning of an everything, and not magic, is happening. Saturday in Rome I found myself next to a barrier, truly by chance, without elbowing my way there, and the Pope passed and looked at me. I turned to my husband and friends and said, “He looked at me, he looked at me.” And they said the same, “He looked at me;” “Me too.” It was just a gaze, but that of Jesus, who found us, one by one.            
Rossana