We get angry, we are looking for culprits, we assign responsibilities, we take legislative initiatives, we host televised debates and post comments online, looking for the "why" and demanding a harsh punishment for those responsible!
Quickly, Nevertheless, the lens of current affairs will be focused elsewhere, new events will superimpose the case of the cloistered student and, such as, it happens often, before long his story will be forgotten!
This is also a phenomenon of the time, of the image era, of the immediate and ephemeral impression and the information storm, which clouds our thinking and dulls our judgment.
Unfortunately, we are impressed, but we don't think, we get excited, but we are not concerned, we get angry, but we are not taught!
And life "pulls uphill", a Sisyphean uphill climb, without hope of improvement, without vision, without perspective…
How many, is it?, we realized that the late student would enjoy the gift of life, if he "talked";
And how many, is it?, we worried that there was no one to "hear" him;
As if we live in a society of deaf and dumb people, in which no one can or does not want to listen, nobody-maybe, for that;- unwilling or unable to speak…
It is truly paradoxical to speak of a crisis of communication in the age of IT, of the internet, of satellite connections and mobile phones…. We experience, essentially and painfully, the time of loneliness, living like grains of sand, which are millions together and each separately!
An unbearable loneliness, which suffocates and exhausts us, which leads us to self-isolation, in despair, to destruction!
Perhaps, the best memorial for the untimely lost child, the best "revenge" for his death should be the …. linguistics!
We teach our children two or three foreign languages, to become good and successful professionals, but we don't teach them the language to become Human!
The language of practical love, exactly like that, as Christ taught her, during the treatment of the deaf man in the national Decapolis of Judea.
There, some of the local population bring their deaf and dumb sick man to Jesus, with the request to heal him.
Jesus accepts their request, he stays alone with the patient and follows a procedure, which is apparently strange and perhaps absurd.
He puts His fingers in man's ears. He spits and touches his tongue. He raises His eyes to heaven and sighs, he commands "Ephratha" which means: "opened" and heals him!
This is a scene, characterized by silence. There is no dialogue, there are not many words. There is one word and one deed from Jesus.
While, on the part of the "mogilal" there is neither a word nor an action. As long as he doesn't listen and doesn't speak, it's next that he doesn't know, to not be able to understand the message that Christ brings, and therefore not be able to respond.
In this weakness, Christ uses an alternative way of communication, which the man of history understands and responds to: An Act! A Touch!
The deaf and dumb man is a fascinating example of our world who is spiritually deaf and dumb (Εφ. 2.1).
Our world does not hear the voice of the God of Love, because he can't hear.
In our deaf and dumb society, who kills her children, we need to speak the language, which she understands, the language of the act!
Parents should talk to their children in this language, in this language the teachers with their students, in this language the spouses, the friends, the Churchmen, political and spiritual issues!
In the silent and international language of practical love, which establishes mutual trust, it breaks down the walls of loneliness and opens wide the soul of people, and especially young people, to the other, the parent, the teacher, the husband, the friend, the leader, that they will no longer treat him as their "hell"., but as "brother", to which they will be able to deposit and with which they will share, they will discuss and face fears, the anxieties, the concerns, their problems and dreams, since they will now speak the same language!
This language we did not take care to teach our young people, let's not talk to them either, that's why they "rush" to "talk" with God himself…
† Dorotheos II of Syros and Mykonos
(Magazine "POLITICAL ISSUES", τ. 77, MARCH 2015)