For the World Mission Sunday celebrated on October 18, Pope Francis stressed the importance of being "fraternity weavers".. At the Angelus that day he said: "It is a beautiful word, 'weavers'. All Christians are called to be weavers of fraternity. In a special way, missionaries - priests, consecrated men and women and lay people - who sow the Gospel in the great field of the world. Let us pray for them and give them our concrete support".
Entire civilizations have based their way on the ability to know how to weave, in the sense of knowing how to mend, repair or readjust objects to prolong their functioning or to build others. New bronze statues from the casting of other statues, Christian churches from pagan temples, new cities from old cities. Today this is no longer the case because, from an economic point of view, it is often not convenient: how many times have we been told that the cost of the repair is higher than the cost of the new object.
The relationship, however, often requires the art of knowing how to weave by mending. This is true for everyone, not only for missionaries. If we do not know the value of restoring and mending a broken one, we are condemned to affective isolation.
It is important to understand that, in the process of breaking and mending, of crisis and overcoming, which concern a vocation, whatever it may be, mending does not spoil but improves. Mending a tear is like making a beautiful embroidery, precious, attentive, tidy, but which, unlike embroidery, will be appreciated not when it is seen, but precisely because no one will see it. Some tailors carry the inscription: "We make invisible patches", and place their pride precisely in knowing how to repair with a light hand so that no one notices. This is something that each of us must learn for our lives.
