RUSSIA/ From a friendship in the old USSR, the hope that things can change in Gaza and Ukraine
During the Soviet era, people prayed for the evangelization of the USSR. Much has changed, and the same hope applies to Gaza and Ukraine. But also to our children.
In the last fifteen days I have had the grace of meeting on several occasions many of my friends, and among them also many of my former students, who live in what was the USSR .
There were moments of true emotion as we reflected on our history, which, in different ways, has made us recognize that Christianity is not an ideology, a doctrine endowed with a noble morality, but the experience of a friendship founded on the encounter with the risen Christ, who continues to live among us.
The other evening, while reviewing some images of the war in Ukraine and the tragedy in Gaza, I somehow remembered, while writing to an old friend, the time we prayed for the possibility of evangelization in Russia and its environs. To many, this seemed like a pointless ritual to ask for an impossible grace. And yet...
As we know, it cannot be said that Russia and its surroundings have become a land where everyone lives in peace as good Christians. Moreover, not everyone here lives in peace, and I wouldn't say we're all good Christians here. Yet the evident miracle that has allowed many, like the friends I mentioned at the beginning, to commit their lives to the Lord gives us reasonable hope that things can change in Gaza and Ukraine too. Of course, prayer must be accompanied by every attempt to demonstrate concretely not only that things can change, but that for some, they are already changing.
Perhaps sometimes we're too concerned, as on so many talk shows, with simply having the right judgment on certain situations we don't usually understand deeply. So it can happen that even some of my friends' sons and daughters, who were born and raised here, like other kids who haven't experienced their parents' experiences, are tempted to reject it or, at least, deem it unworthy of a lifelong commitment.
So I made a strange, perhaps even slightly crazy, decision: to invite some of these young people to go with me to where their parents grew up and meet the friends with whom they encountered Christianity and the young people with whom they are continuing their experience. Among other things, I would like them to also learn about some aspects of life in the former Soviet Union, which are rarely discussed here, or, if they are, are often clichéd.
It was a surprise and a great satisfaction that these boys, with an enviable purity of heart, accepted the challenge of their parents' old teacher.
I hope this can be of use not only to them, but also to many Christian parents who, faced with their children's skepticism, are beginning to help them not only with the right words, but by offering exceptional experiences that shake off their hostility or, more often, their indifference.
Then the mystery of children's freedom comes into play; we've learned that we can be free to refuse, even something great that's proposed to us.
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