Dear readers, when a few months ago, it was announced The theme of the Jubilee – “Pilgrims of hope” – In the editorial staff of believing we immediately wondered how to “tell” such a high theological theological profile. Thus was born the idea of “Wayfarers of hope”, The series of interviews published in recent months on Believededicated to personalities who could “embody” hope for us today, otherwise the theme that risked being abstract and far from life: we have thus asked Gemma Capra Calabresi and Cristina Cattaneo, Don Luigi Verdi, Beatrice Fazi and others, seeking together with them the signs of hope among the folds of many different existential paths. The interviews, which were also video recorded, then found space on television, on Televa and the coral network.
Finally, in these days they have taken another form: in fact, a podcast arrives in several episodes entitled The wayfarer of hopein which the interviews we have created are told for a wider audience, with a equipment of acronym and music. You can find them on the main platforms (Spotify, Spreaker, Apple Podcast, Amazon Music) or the link Bit.ly/crederepodcast.
I hope you want to listen to them in many, finding – in a new, all audio form, what is the podcast – the freshness and strength of those interviews, so rich in ideas on the theme of hope. In humanly desolate and desolate times, in which our daily life seems to be filled almost only by disheartening news, it is important to cultivate the art of hope, not to resign itself to the state of affairs.
So I believe that Listening to these testimonies can be an exercise in contrast. Compared to reading only – which touches the mind more, favoring meditation – listening to a podcast adds the emotional force of the voice of the interviewees, music, the narrative voice that accompanies us within every story. In short, it favors that Communication “from heart to heart” of which Pope Francis often spoke. An “immersive” experience that helps us tune in to an emotionally emotionally. Experience that can be done at any time, whatever we are doing, with a mobile phone and headphones.
We need, more than ever, the experiences of those who have been able to transform the most difficult situations to good: Thus we learn to look at the present through the lenses of the “smaller of the virtues”, as he called it Charles Péguy.
Pope Francis recalled a few days ago, in the catechesis of Wednesday widespread on March 5, that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was “pilgrim of hope” And the first disciple of Jesus, because he followed him and let himself be shaped by the Word of God. But, he recalls the Pope, “this singular communion with the Word of God does not spare her the effort of a demanding” apprenticeship “”. I wish everyone and everyone that this Lent is an “apprenticeship” of faith and hope, in the footsteps of Mary.
