Our features with Mario Antonio Clerici, a devoted reader of ours and a volunteer with the Italian Red Cross, form part of the journey of hope begun with the 2025 Jubilee.
In this second article, he presents volunteering as one of the concrete faces of hope.
Hope has a face
There is a word that today seems to have disappeared from everyday vocabulary: hope; so first of all I express my gratitude to Pope Francis, who dedicated the Churchβs Jubilee precisely to hope (inaugurated on Christmas Eve with the opening of the Holy Door of St. Peterβs Basilica in Rome). If news of wars, global crises, and the galloping cost of living have, so to speak, robbed us of the ability to hope for everyday life shaped by peace and serenity, there are areas, such as voluntary emergency relief work, in which hope is not only present but continually evoked. It is when transporting an injured person or a person with a disability, a frail elderly person, or a mother about to give birth to her child that we understand how hope is truly part of each of us. And we look it in the eyes, managing to give it a face as well as a name.
On a bench in Colfioritoβ¦
To try to explain what all this concretely means, I would like to recall an episode that left its mark on me.
I was in Colfiorito, a delightful village in the province of Perugia, in Umbria. The earthquake of September 1997 had reduced it to rubble. With my team of Red Cross volunteers, I had arrived there at the beginning of winter from Lombardy (I live in the province of Como) to deliver food and basic necessities.
A few rays of sunlight, brushing the faces of two elderly people sitting on a bench in the town center, gave the illusion of normality. It was merely an appearance, because the earthquake had shattered the houses, shops, and offices as if they were dry biscuits. I had seen the images on television and in the newspapers, but being there - among the rubble, amid the dust from the cornices that continued to crumble, with the risk of being hit - was an entirely different matter. Nevertheless, the two spouses, either very old or perhaps suddenly aged after an earthquake that had left them only their lives, taking everything else from them, sat on the bench in the square of Colfiorito as if nothing had happened.
I sat down beside them after a brief inspection with the armed forces to survey the earthquake damage, together with other Red Cross volunteers from Northern Italy. The elderly people did not react when I took a seat on the bench, silently joining them.
What could I say to them? I had no words even for myself in the face of such great, sudden devastation. Time passed, and it seemed endless. Being with them still made me feel that I could be useful, to some extent. When I was about to get up, the man placed his hand on mine, setting it down as if to seek a fixed point, he who had nothing left, or a place to land, in a moment of total insecurity.
That was hope: the certainty of not being alone and of finding the way to look ahead; in that case, the way was a man wearing a Red Cross uniform.
Patience: a path to building hope
βEveryone hopes. In every personβs heart, hope is contained as a desire and expectation of good, even without knowing what tomorrow will bring. The unpredictability of the future, however, gives rise to sometimes conflicting feelings: from trust to fear, from serenity to despair, from certainty to doubt.β As I reread these words, entrusted by Pope Francis to the Bull proclaiming the Jubilee Spes non confundit (Hope Does Not Disappoint), I also understand the meaning of the comfort that an extremely simple gesture β allowing a person in difficulty to lean on us β can offer someone who feels lost and discouraged. Pope Francis also associates patience with the virtue of hope. When I think of those two elderly people from Colfiorito, they continue to show us the way to building hope, sitting silently, almost as if in contemplation, without haste.
Those who provide aid know that, while the service must be prompt, the attitude to adopt toward a person in an emergency requires the utmost calm and composure, so that the sufferer can feel reassured.
Volunteering is a face of hope
βHopeβ is an apparently simple, almost obvious word, to which many meanings can be attributed; as a volunteer, I interpret it as an attitude of openness toward another person in need: a smile, a loving gesture, or a comforting word is enough for a person in difficulty to immediately change their expression. The tension eases, they place their trust in the rescuers, and sometimes they can even manage to smile. This is why volunteering can present itself as a living experience of hope, one of hopeβs possible faces for living the Jubilee.
In contact with those who suffer, we come to understand that βbeing there for anotherβ is perhaps the most immediate way of sharing what life gives us; we understand that hope must not be confused with a daydream. On the contrary, it presents itself as the driving force that motivates us to change, with patience and kindness, the negative things we encounter every day. As for me, this is the purpose that, as a volunteer emergency responder, I carry with me during this Holy Year.
Pilgrimage as βmoving toward our neighborβ
Ultimately, pilgrimage, βa fundamental element of every jubilee event,β as our Pontiff reminds us, has its βzero degree,β which consists in moving toward our neighbor and allowing the other person, in turn, to make themselves our neighbor.
Someone might object that there is always a door involved! The first weeks of the Jubilee were marked by moving ceremonies opening ancient basilicas or places of worship belonging to Christian communities. In fact, even in volunteer work - emergency relief, but not only that - reaching out to those beside us implies opening ourselves up, and therefore somehow moving beyond established views of the world, or even of ourselves. I find that this βmoving beyondβ is the dynamic proper to hope, which ultimately consists in going beyond a difficulty or a period of stagnation in life.
Thinking back to the elderly people of Colfiorito, I realize their effort to go beyond: in seeking contact with me, as I sat beside them, it was as if they were flinging open the door of solitude to which the earthquake had confined them, entering the dimension of solidarity, an ingredient for beginning to hope again, beyond the rubble.
Mario Antonio Clerici shared with us his way of living hope, his way of becoming, as a volunteer, a pilgrim of hope; if you wish, we also await your stories: share with us your way of living the Jubilee!
