An article by Prof. AG Fidalgo CSsR, published on the blog of the Alfonsiana Academy
We draw inspiration from figures such as Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948); Virginia Woolf (1882-1941); Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (1913-2005); Martin Luther King (1929-1968), without forgetting Saint Francis of Assisi, whose eighth centenary of death we celebrate in 2026, among many others, to remember, without forgetfulness or vengeance, as a process of recovery, healing, liberation, and reconciliation. We need to value the fundamental movement of life to take charge and implement “processes of care ” that sustain the meaning of our existence. Human-evangelical inspiration is that which, like the familiar figures and the many simple, everyday ones who struggle every day for life among streets, homes, and workplaces, among ruins and desolation, among limping and endless laments, among small but fervent yearnings, almost with the subtle obstinacy to give birth to life with no other task than that of living and not merely enduring, allows us to continue walking, to continue to unite, with the best convictions, the desire for the future and its construction through struggle and the courage that does not disappoint.
We need these inspirations just as we need to start from breath, the breath of life. Because it’s not just and primarily a matter of starting from simple “ideas,” since everything began with breath, the Ruah, the breath of pregnant times, a breath yearning for life, a movement of life, inspiring, and exhaling. It is the greatest gift we have received; we are breath and encouragement, and we cannot betray this initial and foundational existential movement. We receive breath-breath, and for this reason we can give ourselves to the desire to live, until the day when, as our last action and attitude, we release it, we return it. Living is based on this simple, almost automatic movement, fraught with great fragility. Without breath and inspiration, we cannot truly fulfill our existence. We are inspired by the ancestral wisdom of peoples, their literary and religious texts; we are inspired by people with their lives, marked by yearnings and struggles. We are also inspired – as a warning – by the betrayals of those original and vital breaths, when through incompetence, malice, and wrong choices these breaths were cut off, the yearnings and struggles for a more dignified and free life were cut short, which could be called with all rigors: human.
A life of the Church, a morally acceptable life, a life that respects and recreates its “historical memory,” constantly needs new inspiration and new challenges. We cannot continue to proclaim ideas, whether evangelical or humanistic, without undertaking various types of bold actions, without real struggles at all levels to ensure that the processes of transformation are real and aim for greater levels of humanization, more authentic expressions of a life inspired by the Gospel of Jesus Christ, capable of transcending so many traditions that not only no longer correspond to this key, but completely betray it. Therefore, “a Dios rogando y con el mazo dando,” as a Spanish proverb says (“Heaven helps those who help themselves”), yes to longings, but accompanied by real and concrete commitments through exercises of transformation. Our churches and societies, faced with so many internal and external challenges, both personal and shared, often feel stuck, locked in ideological conflicts, mired in individualistic and unhealthy actions, laden with spurious interests. These actions prevent humble, lucid, and bold discernment, enabling us to take the urgent and necessary steps that free us from being locked away in places far from real life and the profound meaning of history. Breathing these winds and drawing inspiration from these movements is today more vital and necessary than ever, if we are not to self-destruct and lose ourselves in unhealthy and dehumanizing institutional “navelisms.”
We propose to continue the reflection by meditating on and analyzing in depth the following texts: Dilexi te, n. 31; Fratelli tutti, nn. 11; 14; 77; 112; 116; 169; 188; 203; 229; 232; 241-243; 268; 277, which show us the importance of desires and struggle in total relation. We conclude, as Fratelli tutti does, by referring to another inspiring testimony of desires and life in transformation: Charles de Foucauld (1858-1916), in reference to whom the papal text tells us that:
He gradually oriented his ideal of total dedication to God towards an identification with the least, abandoned in the depths of the African desert. In that context, he expressed his aspiration to feel every human being as a brother and asked a friend: “Pray to God that I may truly be the brother of all the souls of this country.” He wanted to be “the universal brother.” But only by identifying with the least did he become the brother of all. May God inspire this ideal in each of us. Amen (FT, n. 287).
