Lent: the flavor of the Word

From Calabria, the missionScalabrinian Father Renato Zilio speaks to us about the importance that in some places is given to the Word of God

I watch her slowly advance, bow slightly, and present herself at the pulpit. “Letter of St. Paul…”

Maria, a Calabrian immigrant who has lived in London since the 60s, begins to read, but only after a very long breath. She doesn't read, she proclaims. Extremely slowly. She pronounces one word after another, articulating it as if she were telling a child something with a timeless inflection, breath, and rhythm. Suspended in the air. There's absolutely no rush or desire to finish. For a child, every word is like a window that illuminates an event or emotion within. It will be important, then, to take the time to look out...

For Saint Paul, every word is a message, like a fruit full of life, addressed to a gathered community. Mary pauses every now and then in an interminable silence. Beneficial. "Every authentic word is born from silence and is preserved by silence," says one author. It almost seems as if every word of the Apostle is carved from the depths of his soul, from the experience of struggle of an itinerant being, a migrant like her. Like him. But there is also the love for our language. In the sea of ​​another that surrounds you abroad, your mother tongue is a land of salvation. An encounter with what you once were, your very origin.

It's like listening to her letter from a son writing from the front. Every word is weighed, lifted, examined, reconsidered, savored to the full. It's Paul of Tarsus from the front of the first communities and the Spirit that animates them. Communities gathered by him, but made of a thousand different pieces that Paul loved as the one who generates them, like a mother.

And they are so similar to our community today in London, made up of Calabrians and Friulians, people from the south and the north combined, with a few locals. I look in amazement at this diverse assembly of emigrants from our land, who right here savor the words "unity" and "communion" in the name of God.

And so I think about the discomfort I sometimes feel when returning to my country. The Word of God in a celebration seems like something read quickly, like an old poem learned in school and repeated mechanically. It almost seems like a word that slips away without flavor, without love. You don't sense the strength of the Apostle or the fire of the Spirit. You don't see the anxiety or the thousand faces of a people of God finally reunited. They are ours, simply.

I think, then, of the Word of God lived some time ago in African landAfter the singing, the drums, the voices, the hands, their rhythm with two beats and two pauses, a long choral cry rose to its climax and everything, finally, died away as if by magic. One was immediately plunged into a perfect, motionless silence. A myriad of dark faces stared at you, then, from the assembly, eyes wide open. Long moments of waiting, while a true emotion grips you. Then, the word leaves the reader's mouth. It is offered with a slow gesture, as if savoring it first, rolling it on the palate, savoring it. A calm, sonorous, and solemn word. You immediately see from the eyes and the silence how each one receives it: they await it, savor it, it resonates in their temples, makes their gaze shine, it descends into the soul, deep within.

You can then understand concretely what a "civilization of the word" like this African one means. The word here is sacred. It is a synthesis of heart, body, and mind.
And even more so than the love of God, who himself became the Word.

It settles in the life of each of us after we listen, penetrating it to give us strength, beauty, and courage. And it makes us understand, ultimately, the dignity of their very existence, "a sacred history" written in our day. In the tears, joys, and victories of poor people who struggle, suffer, and love. Biblical figures of today. They have encountered God, without knowing it.

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• Photo of Father Renato Zilio