February 23, 2026
I Monday of Lent
Fr. Graziano Buonadonna
May the Lord give you peace! I am Fr. Graziano Maria from the Convent of the Memorial of Saint Paul in Damascus Syria.
How have we set out on this new holy season? Jesus is in the desert, and where are we? I would like to share with you two songs that have been accompanying me in these first days of Lent.
The first is by Ultimo who in "Fateme cantà" says:
"Let me sing because I do not feel like being with these people
who talk to me but say nothing
eh eh eh…
…
Let me sing I am going crazy
Chasing too many demands
I need at roll call
to say that I am absent."
How many times are we with people who speak and communicate nothing, "I do not feel like being with these people who talk to me but say nothing", and how many times are we the ones who speak without realizing that we leave those around us emptier than before. Here is the grace of Lent, the Lord invites us to keep Him company in the desert to rediscover the taste of the word and of being with others even in silence.
Again Ultimo says, "I need at roll call to say that I am absent." The Lord is in the desert offering us a way not to want to be absent, but to live among others without having to flee from them, with a new inner strength.
The second inspiration comes from a song by Vasco Rossi. When I was an adolescent I remember an interview with young people before one of his concerts in Milan. The journalist asked the young people why they liked Vasco Rossi and why he was so successful. The young people of different ages all answered in the same way, "He reads inside us, he sings our pain, his songs sing our struggle to live."
"Living together with me, you are right, you are right,
it is not at all simple, it never has been,
I who believed more than you that it was possible,
we are alone…"
Jesus enters the desert to tune Himself to our fears, to read as a true man our loneliness, our existential discomforts. Jesus invites us to enter the desert with Him to show us the struggle others make to live with us as the song says, "Living together with me is not at all simple, it never has been."
What do these two songs have to do with today’s Gospel? In today’s Liturgy of the Word Jesus tells us in which deserts He dwells, using dramatic images that clearly tell us that there is no corporal work that does not arise from a spiritual dimension that questions our inner world.
Jesus says, "I was hungry and you gave me food." How many times are we surprised that our need to eat carries with it a greater need, to share bread, to feel loved, the trust of eating from the same dish, to know how to grow old together at table, in these words there is all this and much more.
"I was thirsty and you gave me drink." In how many parts of the world, too many, water is dirty, sick, not chaste as Saint Francis sings in the Canticle of the Creatures. This is not a limit of nature, but a consequence of our sick soul.
"I was a stranger and you welcomed me." Every day we see how these words of Jesus are abused outside and inside the Church. When we welcome it is good to remember the words of Don Lorenzo Milani, "Make way for the poor and do not make your way through the poor." And to those who leave difficult countries it is good to remember not to make the place that welcomes you worse than the place you left.
"I was naked and you clothed me." Are not the naked those who were sincere in friendship, in love, in their vocation to the nakedness of the heart and were struck, humiliated by those to whom they gave the nakedness of their soul?
"I was sick and you visited me." Visiting a sick person is always a risk, it reminds us that time is not money, but communication. Visiting a sick person is a risk for our life, we might be infected, but it is also a risk for our soul, for our certainties. Before illness we do not know what to say, our false certainties fall and violently we are placed before the reality of limit, of death.
"I was in prison and you came to visit me." These words of Jesus are dramatically beautiful. Who is in prison? Those who have violated, those who have abused children, those who have killed, those who have done evil and have not repented, those who are innocent. Jesus is in them.
This is the most scandalous verse because it is Jesus Himself who reveals to us that He dwells in those who have committed unspeakable evils. One cannot visit a prisoner without being questioned interiorly, without opening ourselves to interior forgiveness which is a grace, a gift of God.
In conclusion let us try to read these verses from another perspective, not that of having to perform these works but of those who need to receive them.
I am hungry and Jesus is hungry with me, who will stop to eat with us without speaking on the cellphone, giving us some of his time? I am thirsty, my life is a desert and Jesus in me repeats the cry on the cross, "I thirst." Who will give us to drink by sharing their own soul? I am a stranger, I do not know to whom to turn and Jesus begs with me, with me He tries to knock on the hearts of many, who will welcome us? I am naked and in me Jesus is naked as He was naked on the cross. Who will give us the sincerity of heart? I am in prison and Jesus suffers in me. Who will have compassion on us?
Take courage, Jesus is in our inner deserts, He dwells in our poverty, we are not alone.
Happy desert to everyone!
Amen.
