For Romano Guardini, hope was linked to patience, to the ability to live in the tension between what one is and what one desires, finding a calm and profound strength to grow and face the future of life, without fleeing from suffering, but embracing it as a way to experience being in shipwreck. An active hope that does not stop at perfection, but is embodied in everyday life.
If there is one place where it is easy to lose hope, it is behind bars; it is the so-called “prisoner syndrome”. The prisoner feels alone and out of place, and the idea of rebuilding his life distresses him.
In prison, the inmate experiences that he is alone in the real world, probably with no one waiting for him when he comes out, resulting in a loss of self-esteem and, perhaps, of the meaning of life.
It is difficult for a free person to realize what it means to be deprived of freedom, and only the intuition of it makes us shudder.
When, in a hospital, I found an establishment selling bread made by prisoners, I entered without hesitation. “Today's bread has been kneaded last night by someone who is in prison,” I said to my family during dinner, and I perceived an invisible embrace made of sacred silence.
I was moved to learn that, in a prison, some women have created a workshop that produces hosts for Mass, which offers them an opportunity for personal and professional growth.
Women who every day strive to carry out this work, carrying out a project that unites an educational dimension, civil responsibility and a path of rescue.
The degree of civilization of a society is measured by the treatment of prisoners. When the same hands that committed crimes are capable of creating something sacred, like the hosts that embody the path of rebirth, that is pure poetry.
