{"id":306510,"date":"2018-09-25T23:10:42","date_gmt":"2018-09-25T21:10:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/raise-the-stakes\/"},"modified":"2024-05-15T20:38:11","modified_gmt":"2024-05-15T18:38:11","slug":"raise-the-stakes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/raise-the-stakes\/","title":{"rendered":"Raise the stakes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>A cloudy and humid day, and a sensation of emptiness. Only the day before I had celebrated my birthday, and made an ambitious wish<\/strong>: do all I can to make the new year shine as never before, imbuing each thing with love. I knew I would have had to start over again a thousand times, but I wanted to give my utmost. It was a sign of gratitude to Jesus for the gift of life. Not an isolated gift, but an intention valid for the entire year. He himself would have helped me.  <strong>And yet, while going to an appointment, I felt that the cloudy sky was also inside me.<\/strong> I had allowed to silently creep into my heart a judgment of a brother who had once again disappointed me. It didn\u2019t matter whether I was right or not. Inside me, charity was missing. I felt it with pain and I asked myself how I had gotten to that point.  <strong>I came across a boy I often met. Dirty, stinky, with the usual bottle in hand. He was barefoot and shivering from the cold.<\/strong> He looked at me without a word. I greeted him courteously, thinking that in that way I was doing all I could, and continued my path. In that moment the Parable of the Good Samaritan came to mind. \u201cAm I also like that Pharisee? Or do I let myself be challenged by that boy\u2019s countenance of abandonment? I took off my sweater and went back. \u201cDo you feel cold? \u201cYes, very\u201d he answered. \u201cTry on my sweater, let\u2019s see if it fits.\u201d He was so bewildered, but I almost didn\u2019t dare touch him, since his hands really needed a good wash. \u201cC\u2019mon, try it on.\u201d The size was perfect and his face seemed like that of a child on Christmas Eve. I greeted him and continued along my way, certainly feeling a bit cold, but happy.  <strong>While waiting to meet my friend, a subtle voice spoke inside me.<\/strong> \u201cWhat you did was nice, but what about that judgment you have?\u201d \u201cBut Jesus \u2013 I answered \u2013 that person may not even have noticed it\u2026.\u201d \u201cBut I did notice, I was in him.\u201d One by one the arguments and excuses that came to mind were erased. Going home I decided to call him. A serene conversation, without any hard feeling on his part. Full unity was re-established, even if, to tell the truth, something inside me had snapped. A great, unmistakable peace invaded me.  <strong>Two hours later, the doorbell rang<\/strong>. It was a dear friend, returning from his hometown with a gift for my birthday: a sweater! It was Jesus who was saying: <strong>\u201cRaise the stakes!\u201d<\/strong>  &nbsp;  From: \u201cLa vida se hace camino\u201d, Urs Kerber, Ciudad Nueva Ed., Buenos Aires 2016, pp 41-42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When the game of love for God and our neighbours becomes a daily exercise, in our hearts there is no longer any room for half measures.<\/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-306510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-categorizzato"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306510","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=306510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306510\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}