Perhaps because everything is calmer at the moment and I am less distracted, a few days ago something happened to me that provoked me deeply, that had not happened to me for a long time.

I took advantage of the silence at home, whilst the children were having their afternoon nap, to read Carrón's text: Reawakening Our Humanity. The first pages disturbed me: I did not believe that I had lived "in a bubble". Even though I feel that I have been very lucky in the life that has been given to me, I also have had to really apply myself and have experienced difficult moments.

I continued reading with the hypothesis that he was talking about something that I did not understand, and I got to the point in the text where a nurse talks about the drama of Coronavirus: on the one hand, the sick who feel their death is approaching and cannot have their loved ones or friends by their side; on the other hand, family members who are informed of the death of their loved ones without being able to be there to accompany them in this mysterious moment of life. The same drama was recounted in reports that I saw on TV: I specifically remember a young woman who was mourning the unexpected death of her 60-year-old father and who had to stay away from her mother to avoid the spread of the virus. I put myself in her shoes and a question burst out in my heart: "Why is all this, which seems so contradictory to the desires of the heart, happening?" Even though I am not experiencing this circumstance directly, this question has been provoking me since the beginning of the epidemic, and I do not know how to give an answer to it.

In his text, Carrón quotes the episode from the Gospel of the widow of Nain whose child has just died. How can Christ say to her: "Woman, do not weep?” That is my question. Which leads to another one: is there anything real today that can allow a heart wounded by such pain not to cry? Today, Christ is not here in the flesh, nor do we see people resurrected before our eyes. Is Christ's presence really so real that it consoles the heart? A letter from another girl describes exactly the same drama: she has just lost her mother. I cannot understand how she can say: pain is there, but so is gratitude. Her father, on the other hand, seems not to have this same hope. Is there anything that saves in such a circumstance?

In that moment, I felt all the drama of life, the mystery of reality that escapes my capacity to understand, and I burst into tears with a great question: will this great desire for happiness that we have in our hearts find its fulfillment? Or is it our destiny to come up against pain that has the upper hand?

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At that very moment, my 5-year-old daughter entered my room. My eyes were closed so as not to show my tears and I pretended to be asleep. She put a sheet of paper next to me, she said, "Daddy, I did a drawing for you," and she left. I started crying again, but this time it was because I was moved: "Is this your face, O Christ? Is the answer this simple love of which my daughter is an example, and which is worth more than anything else?”

Now I understand why Carrón was talking about the "bubble". And why this circumstance can reawaken my humanity. Life is really deep and mysterious. I do not want to live on the surface without searching for the answer to what my heart really desires. Who are you Jesus?

Alberto, Paris, France#Coronavirus