THE STREETS
The place where life is real, the bright tremulous picture of the whole human society. The street, the place of equality, unrestricted by any border but where the most striking, most piercing inequalities are, for different reasons, displayed.
The street is a drum that intones man's sounds of joy and of distress. Because it is in the street that every moment of anger, of despair, of pain and of rebellion is lived. It is on the streets that the cry of injustice, of misunderstanding is heard, where everyone is alike and united and where there is resistance. It is on the streets that the weaker, the oppressed, the excluded and the abandoned meet each other, and reassemble to speak of their distress. Their sadness and their anger? And that is not all -. because it is in the cauldron of all turbulence that the ideas of freedom, justice, and fraternity slowly overflow. It is there, under the skies of the cities, that, between the walls of comfort, selfishness and fear, we find those that refuse to bend their backbone under the pretext of some sort of social economic disaster, those that do not believe in the imperatives of a certain era, become forcibly inhuman.
Because humanity is found on the streets. And there the hearts of the people of God beat closely to the pavement, the Gospel will "come outside", permanently, inviting confrontation with the chaotic advances of a society in permanent evolution.
To ignore, to stay behind the counter, to refuse to mix with the life that flows and swarms under your feet - it's as if you are looking through a shattered mirror. What we see is not a counterfeit picture, far from reality. What we see is the future.
Happily, the Christians risk to mix directly, even brutally, with the pains and the joys, with the tragedies and the festivals of this world. They come to the streets to offer solidarity. And they rejoice when the word of God is spread throughout the streets.