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I met many people during my last visit to the missions: many faces and looks that are still mixing in my mind; it’s hard for me to remember them  all but I feel them present inside of me.
Faces of young people happy to donate their lives without sparing themselves and others sad because they are still tied to the selfishness of those who think only about themselves, faces of children lined by the grief of having been abandoned but also full of hope and true joy, suffering looks of families under the burden of the bleeding cross of their children lost in evil and others resurrected together with them after the dark calvary of drugs but now full of gratitude and hope.
Faces of poor people, condemned to misery, lined with the deep wrinkles of those who day by day fight to survive, living of privation and faces of rich people, wealthy for the world but often poor of hope and true life.
I keep in my heart the looks of children that peer into you, that question you ,the eyes of teenagers that challenge you ,that follow each of your steps, looking for the possibility and the safety of true life in your consistency, in your acts if faithful to your words ;eyes of parents that long for forgiveness, human warmth, solace and hope.
It’s beautiful to think that You too, my Lord, have had a human face and look in the Baby Jesus, that You deeply identified with our humanity, that You have inhabited and saved us all. You were a child ,a teenager and a young man and then a man; Your eyes have questioned, loved, helped, healed, stroked the sufferings of mankind: men and women, children and young people, rich and poor, believers and non ,all of them have met you.
Thanks to the miracle of Your incarnation in each person there is Your face ,in each look Your eyes. There is a part of You inside of us and in any person we meet. You made all the experiences of our lives Yours, taking them upon You: from the first cry in Bethlehem to the last sigh on the cross there is nothing of ours that doesn’t belong to You. Your face has smiled and cried, has loved tenderly and scolded, was lined with the pain and the anguish of the cross, but also enlightened and transfigured by the light of resurrection.
It’s meeting and contemplating Your face, like Mary and Joseph in the Bethlehem grotto, like the shepherds and the Magi, that also ours becomes new, that we feel sure that God is with us, one of us.
“I look for Your face, don’t hide it from me ”: in Bethlehem, my Lord, Your face is revealed at last. We can see You, meet You, follow You. You live in our humanity, each man carries You inside of himself mysteriously: Your face is Love. Make us aware and deserving of this presence of Yours, make us serve and love our brothers because in love Your faces is born again, resurrects and wins death.
If we meet You everything changes, everything becomes new, nothing is like before, we become new men and women, with a serene face and bright eyes.
Contemplating You, Jesus, we find ourselves again!
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