After the experience of Lisbon, the return to Italy of the young people of PIME animation is an invitation to continue walking: on the paths of their lives illuminated by an experience that will continue to reverberate for a long time
«I know boats that get a little scratched on the ocean routes where their game takes them.
I know boats that have never stopped going out once again, every day of their lives and that are not afraid sometimes to launch forward side by side at the risk of sinking.
I know boats that return to port torn all over, but braver and stronger.
I know boats overflowing with sun because they have shared wonderful years.
I know boats that always come back when they’ve sailed.
Until their last day, and they’re ready to spread their giant wings because they have a heart fit for the ocean.” (Jacques Brel)
Since Homer, the sea has obviously been a metaphor for life. The Christian tradition then also made it a pilgrimage frontier. Perhaps for this reason Father Alessandro Canale, a PIME missionary, decided to give us this poem by Jaques Brel as a “bon voyage”. Our journey does not stop in Milan: the emotions, the encounters we have experienced, the testimonies and the many “presences” with which we have come into contact will still move our hearts and our bodies after our return. New ports, new emporiums, new routes, waves and calms, heatwaves and storms still await us. The propellant will be the wealth accumulated in our pilgrimage: the need to share that joy that cannot fail to expand, like a perfume, like a precious nard that exhales from a broken bottle.
Many hours of bus took us back to the places where we had already stopped on the outward journey. Almost forced stages, which however did not deprive us of other moments of joy: in Madrid we met again the community with which we had shared a splendid evening, and that twinning of joy and music was refreshed and enriched. Also in Barcelona then we allowed ourselves a moment of celebration and thanksgiving: to the Lord, to our spiritual guides and to the cooks who helped us.
The last stage takes us from Catalonia to Milan in a single leg. The last bang of an incredible fireworks display, in which each pilgrim “illuminated” his and our firmament with his charisma and his light. More than “Goodbye”, it is still right to say “Happy Way”: on the paths of our lives, which will certainly intertwine again and which inevitably aim towards God.