encounter with a woman who changed my life.
The first time I saw her was in a shrine famous for a fierce popular devotion that characterizes it.
Suddenly a ray of sunlight entered the sanctuary and lit up his face: then I realized I had never looked into his eyes and understood the mystery of his heart.
Reading his story I learned that the picture that reproduces the image came from a kiosk located at the edge of a road.
The image depicted in the painting is not particularly artistic merit, since it reproduces colors with simple face of the Madonna and Child with her, but hits the sad expression on his face dominated by two large eyes that have the effect of penetrating the heart of whoever looks at them, leaving an indelible memory. To look at you absently
ago the idea of \u200b\u200ban image even ugly according to traditional aesthetic: it looks like one of many Neapolitan street urchin who meet on the streets of the city's most popular neighborhoods.
If you look closely, however, it turns out that without any doubt an expression of her face is not of this world.
It clearly expresses such delicate feeling that no artist on earth could have been dashed with the depth, and expresses what is sadness mixed with hope, sadness combined in mercy.
Try to mix with the affection of a mother for her children, the pain to see them leave and hope they can be reunited, and you get the picture of Our Lady of the Arch.
The more I look, the more I am convinced that the expression described above her face after he assumed that it marked the sudden fame.
On Easter Monday of 1450, celebrating, as usual every year, a party in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the inhabitants of the district witnessed a miracle on that image which attracted the attention of all the faithful of the surrounding lands. At the shrine of Our Lady some boys were playing in the street and the game was in hitting a ball with a wooden mallet, which was won him his ball go farther.
He pulled his shot the first player, then the other pulled her with more energy and skill, so you can be assured of victory if that shot had not been stopped by the trunk of a linden tree, which was about the direction and close the newspaper of the sacred image. Angry and beside himself with rage, they swore several times .... the Blessed Virgin, then, picked up the ball from the ground, at the peak of anger, hurled it against the portrait, shot in the left cheek, which now, almost had been living flesh, and gave copious blood is red. The bystanders who, attracted by the game, were made around the two players, they were paralyzed with amazement.
Even today we see on the left cheek of the Virgin an injury that makes it more livid that side of the face depicted in the painting.
Every time I look I can not help but feel compassion.
bad business to try constantly feeling that leads us to put ourselves in others' shoes and try on their skin joys and sorrows of others.
I have often tried to defend myself with compassion by trying to hide behind the shield of cynicism that makes us indifferent to human desperation pass, but did not succeed.
How many times have I paused to contemplate the humanity derelict living on the margins of society, wondering if anyone care the lives of these people?
But what can I do? I asked myself several times watching these souls overwhelmed by the indifference of the world. It is not my job to solve social problems. We think that voluntary associations, the non-profit, no-global, i no logos, no ... .. no ... no ... no ... ... ... ... No.
Yes!
Something maybe I can do: stop by and let me touch that pain, without fear of getting involved in this damned too.
Something maybe I can still do: leave a part of me on those sidewalks and affect some of them inside my soul.
Something maybe I can do: rely on their mother full of compassion and hope; hope that for them there may be a way out and I hope that for them one day you can repeat the miracle of the resurrection of eternal life ... ... ... .... Then
also a part of me will rise.
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