Start of the school year, Bellandi’s letter to students and teachers

Dear all,

with the start of the new school year, the summer vacation period ends, a time in which – some more, some less – each of you had more opportunity to have “free” time, in which to do what you liked. Especially for you kids, summer is the time for fun, for playing, for meeting up with friends, for being able to go to the beach or to the mountains, or visit unknown places. All of us, let’s admit it, have felt freer in this summer time! A time that we could define as “extraordinary” compared to the ordinariness of everyday life.

But now the usual, ordinary time begins again, made up of school commitments, lessons to prepare, books to study, fixed schedules, colleagues or classmates that we have not chosen and that we may find more or less pleasant. And this applies to everyone, students, teachers, school staff. On the other hand, if we think about it carefully, life itself is made up – almost entirely – of circumstances, duties, situations to face that, in the majority of cases, we have not decided; even the people who surround us every day are often not chosen by us, but have been “given” to us. If we reflect for a moment, even our own person is made up of aspects that did not depend on our will, but that we “received”: the place where we were born, our family, the character we have, the abilities or limits that belong to us, our own body.

What do I mean by all this? I would like to say on tiptoe that before you – but also before me, every day – there is a great challenge: learning to “look” with curiosity and positively at what is given to us and with which our life is called to confront, because it can become a great opportunity to grow and learn something new about the great mystery that is existence, to discover aspects and potential of ourselves that we did not think we had before. When the Vietnamese bishop Francis Xavier Nguyên Van Thuân was in prison – he spent 13 years in prison, from 1975 to 1988 – his choice was: «I live the present moment, filling it with love»; and the way in which this was realized was: «I seize the opportunities that present themselves every day, to carry out ordinary actions in an extraordinary way». If even in those extreme conditions, in which he found himself, it was possible to “live with freedom and love”, also for us, in our days, the possibility opens up to experience that what is in front of us – and that perhaps we had seen a thousand times with annoyance or boredom – suddenly acquires an intensity of beauty that amazes and enchants us, to the point that the ordinary becomes extraordinary, making us discover that in the relationship with every thing, person or circumstance, there is the possibility of loving and being free.

Feeling the fullness of life in the little things of every day, living each of our experiences with intensity, seeking what is good for ourselves and for others, and not just what is immediately useful: this brings true joy. A young Sienese woman from the 1300s, Caterina, who the Church proclaimed saint and patron of Italy and Europe, wrote in one of her letters: “Do not be satisfied with small things. God wants them big”! Concluding these reflections, my wish for all of you, on the occasion of this new school year, is therefore that your days become truly “big”!

Happy New Year to everyone!