The strength of the word

Fr. Livio Tonello, director

Mankind has always pursued communication with his fellows using signs, sounds and words. Through oral and written communication we can express emotions and different feelings. A weeping child too expresses his feelings and his tears arouse emotional reactions. The great gift of the word enriched by the language of signs enables us to create relationships, to communicate different messages and to express opinions and ideas.

These considerations underline the meaning of the liturgical celebration of St. Anthony on 13 June. In the Treasury Chapel of the Basilica a modern reliquary houses the still intact vocal apparatus of the Saint that is the symbol of the spiritual strength of his messages inspired by the Gospel inviting to the conversion to Christian life as we can read in his Sermons. Let’s think of his sermon to the fish in Rimini, to the Sermon to the faithful from the walnut tree in Camposampiero, to his commitment against the usurers in Padua, to his meeting with the tyrant Ezzelino and his preaching for simple people.

His words illuminated by the light of the Gospel and by his knowledge of the every day life of his contemporaries are still actual today. But in the age of global communication we cannot always create relationships through oral or written communication. Sometimes words can be aggressive, violent and manipulative as can happen in the social media. It is easy to offend, to insult and to carry out verbal attacks without confronting each other.

Anonymity is an expression of cowardice and of intellectual poverty whose victims are the most fragile ones. This happens to the disabled and people with psychological problems; it happens among schoolmates and against people of different nationality or race. Many people are victims of this “virtual” violence and words can hurt more than a sword; sometimes commitments to fragile people are the target of racist and xenophobe insults, our Association also experiences this because of our commitment to the elderly, to foreigners and to those who are in need. In the Gospel of Matthew (12,34) we read “For from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks”.

The human and intellectual poverty of some people can be really terrible not only because they do not use well the gift of the word but because they shout messages in the social media without any constructive purpose. The evangelic words of St. Anthony are still vibrant, his tongue spread messages of wisdom to the people of the middle ages and they still resonate today. We must not forget that we communicate with the mouth, with the eyes and the gestures. A look is often more eloquent than a thousand words.