“At bottom of the contemporary social crisis lies a powerful need of unification.” With these prophetic words, in 1954, Igino Giordani points to the daily practice of mutual love as the master way towards the reconstruction of the social fabric.

«There is a social question to resolve, because there is the question of the charity that must be put into action. Charity is the sentiment through which another person can be seen as a brother. Indeed, in the human person you see God by way of image, almost a mystical God, raised on high by the Redemption.

They talk about people abandoning the churches. But this could also be a consequence of a charity that was not enacted, of the brotherhood that remained only in missals, of the image of God that was obscured by a practical atheism. Where love is lacking, it is the case to ask whether it was the people who abandoned the churches or the churches that abandoned the people.

I speak of churches, not the Church, which is the People of God and can never abandon itself. Though they distanced themselves from the poor, the Church can never distance itself from itself, a people of paupers, to which the rich also belong, if they become poor in spirit by turning the use of their wealth into a service of charity.

At times, where Christians have forgotten their neighbour, allowing the faith to cake in the sarcophagus of their egos, detached from good works and, in this way, asphyxiated – their weaker, younger brothers, not feeling the love, lose the sense of God who is Love and loves to incarnate charity in the works of men who, by their social service, become the auctioneers and carriers of God. “You have charity, you have the Trinity,” said the great Augustine.

The brothers didn’t love each other, the fabric became worn, and they were detached».

I. Giordani, Il Fratello, 1954

“Il Fratello”, of which this page is an excerpt, is being republished in the Opere Vive series of Citta Nuova Publishing.