{"id":306416,"date":"2018-08-21T23:10:49","date_gmt":"2018-08-21T21:10:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/mohameds-journey\/"},"modified":"2024-05-15T20:37:55","modified_gmt":"2024-05-15T18:37:55","slug":"mohameds-journey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/mohameds-journey\/","title":{"rendered":"Mohamed\u2019s journey"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"\u201cI thought you were asking for help and stumbled into this embrace. <\/strong>Your large, chilly arms awaited my warmth, an exchange of a kind gesture. Like earth awaits rain, a temple breathes prayer, a smile longs for lips, baggage hopes for a trip.\u201d \u201cThis can\u2019t end here, it can\u2019t be. If you have completed this journey and reached my door, I hope you live on, always. If my path ended up with you, I want you to come along for the next stretch. I want to see you grow old, hear you speak my language better and better. I want to hear you confiding with my wife as if she was your mother and laugh with my children as if they were your siblings. I want to be there when you hug your mother, she who gave birth to you, your sisters, your brother. \u201cI beg you. Listen to me. Open your eyes. Smile. I will teach you another magic trick.<\/strong> Put your curdled cells in my hands: I will make them disappear like coins, like paper. In their place I will put them back, healthy. And your body will once again start to work like a delicate, unbelievable mechanism. \u201cI don\u2019t have important things to tell you, thoughts to remember, memorable acts. I have rejected words, concepts that were forgotten even before they were born, meaningless signs. We\u2019re never ready for detachment, it\u2019s never the right time, and we can\u2019t even conceive of absence. Even though you told me how your radiant God awaits, that death is but a natural threshold to cross in order to reach the next phase of existence, and that since you never treated anyone badly you will be rewarded in the afterlife. Even if I strongly believe that dying is going back to one\u2019s origins, as Mary taught me: a marvelous, unending losing oneself in God. \u201cDespite all of this, I don\u2019t want you to go. I need to talk more with you, listen to you, solve problems together.<\/strong> With you I need to dare, to challenge the headwind, to demand, dialogue, and aspire to heaven while living through hell, promising each other, supporting each other. \u201cThere\u2019s no point turning back: I am not ready to see you die, to watch you as you turn the dark corner of things we see and enter into that tunnel of light that we do not know. I am not ready and am only able to take you by the hand and guide your lips and mine in prayer to our one Father. Because what is natural to the divine is murky to people. We assign different names, we build up rules. Yet in the end, what counts is love toward others. \u201cWe met by chance, through those minimal circumstances that change the direction of our lives, to breathe a bit longer, through a revolving door that opened in a moment like any other. Yet now I feel you are like a brother and, as I hope with all my strength to see you awaken, I start to say with you: \u2018Our Father\u2026\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n

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Watch the video<\/span><\/span> https:\/\/vimeo.com\/204141968<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The compelling story recounted by Salvatore D\u2019Antona of Naples, a true story that makes us reflect. Here is a sample from his second novel, published by Citta Nuova.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-306416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-categorizzato"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306416\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}