Encountering God: A Liberative and Societal Experience

Everything in our life, today just as in Jesus’ time,
begins with an encounter. An encounter with this Man, the
carpenter of Nazareth, a man like all men and yet diff erent.
There is an encounter between people, an encounter between
people who were in the street”. And this, he commented, is
“something unusual”. In fact, “when we go into the street, every
man thinks of himself: he sees, but does not look; he hears, but 
does not listen”; in short, everyone goes their own way. And
consequently “people pass each other, but they do not encounter
each other”. Because, Pope Francis clarifi ed, “an encounter is
something else” entirely, and this is “what the Gospel proclaims
to us in our context: an encounter between a man and a woman,
between an only son who is alive and an only son who is dead;
between a happy group of people — happy because they have
encountered Jesus and followed him — and a group of people
who weep as they accompany the woman”, who is a widow and
is on her way to bury her only son. The Church should create
spaces for critical refl ection, spaces where poor people can meet
and refl ect about God’s presence in their concrete situations. 
Also these spaces should be places of communion among
equals, where real participation is lived out. These spaces should
be witness of God’s presence among the people, a presence of
communion, equality and “new creation”.