Look at me when I’m speaking to you.
Words from a mother…

Today we fly WITH THE WIND.
We live overly exposed.
And yet, profoundly alone.
Never has it been so easy to show ourselves.
Never has it been so difficult to truly meet.
But being visible is not the same as being seen.
Visibility is conquered, bought, manufactured…
A gaze, on the other hand… is something we receive.
And when life depends on what others see, we become storefront mannequins.
Then we begin to adapt.
To measure.
To calculate.
To show what works
and hide what gets in the way.
Without realizing it, life becomes strategy.
Because living to be applauded is exhausting.
It is exhausting to sustain an edited version of oneself.
It is exhausting to live made up, polished.
And perhaps the hardest part is not indifference caused by overload, but no longer knowing who we are once we’ve lost our bearings.
Then camouflage appears.
Blending in.
The constant attempt to fit in.
The chameleon complex.
And in that continuous adjustment, what is unique and unrepeatable in us—what we carry and bring to our surroundings—dissolves.

Transparency when it comes to things…
Today, transparency is a value.
Authenticity is sought—very necessary on food labels. “Chocolate-flavored” is meant to tell us it isn’t chocolate…
But people carry an intimacy in which transparency does not consist in displaying oneself like merchandise.
We don’t come with an expiration date.
It consists in allowing a just, respectful gaze. (a minimum requirement)
A gaze that does not invade.
That does not use.
That does not reduce.
A gaze that recognizes, welcomes, and calls forth truth.
And not everything that is understood is respected. Marketing knows this very well when it studies a product’s advantages in order to suggest the need for it.
A person is not used, not exchanged, not replaced.
Modesty, on the other hand, protects.
It safeguards intimacy so that encounter may be possible.
But there is something deeper.
We can be alive… and remain in an inner tomb.
Locked in sadness.
In discouragement.
In apathy.
As if nothing could move.
As if life were already written.
As if there were no way out.

Lift up your gaze!
“Lift up your eyes and look at the fields.”
John 4:35

Faith is not a memory.
Nor an amulet.
Nor a decorative refuge.
Faith is a force that breaks in.
That awakens.
That unsettles.
That sets us back on our feet.
God continues to move stones.
Stones that have names.
Fears.
Failures.
Selfishness.
Indifference.
Wounds that block the heart.
Stones heavier than we can bear.
But they do not have the last word.

Lift up your gaze:
“It means not remaining trapped in the concerns, conflicts, or sorrows of the moment, but looking higher and recognizing the presence of Christ and Christian hope” (Leon XIV)

Lifting up one’s gaze ceases to be an effort.
It becomes a response.
To step out of the vertigo.
To recover the horizon.
To return to meaning.
To regain lost depth.
Easter is not a distant memory.
It is a living call.
To allow oneself to be forgiven.
To change.
To go out.
Not to remain shut in.
Because remaining shut in is also a form of death.

“When the burden of our sins prevents us from taking flight;
when the disappointments or the loneliness we experience drain our hope;
when worries or resentments suffocate the joy of living;
when we feel sadness or weariness; when we feel betrayed or rejected;
when we must face our weakness, suffering, the fatigue of each day,
then it seems we have fallen into a tunnel from which we cannot see a way out.” (Leon XIV)

Christian hope asserts itself.
Not as an idea.
As a presence.
As a certainty that moves through life without denying it and sustains it from within.

Then beauty appears.
Not as decoration, but as a call.
Beauty opens.
Awakens.
Leads.
Points beyond ourselves.
Toward an origin.
Toward a destiny.
Faith does not nullify reason. It enlarges it.
It does not impoverish life. It elevates it.
But for that, we must slow down.
Break away from the urgency.
From constant performance.
From productivity as identity.
Learn to stop.
To look without hurry.
To dwell in what is essential.
To listen to what truly matters.
Because not everything urgent is important.

We are survivors
Of vertigo
Of nonstop doing.
Of productivity without meaning.

TEAR THE VEIL… WITHOUT BREAKING IT.
To understand without reducing.
To look without appropriating.
To welcome without invading.

Allowing oneself to be seen by Beauty is one of the most courageous acts in life.
To accept that we do not build ourselves alone.
That there is a gaze that precedes us and sustains us.
A gaze that does not demand spectacle.
Only truth.

LIFT UP YOUR GAZE!
And perhaps then,
for the first time in a long time,
you will not need to be seen…
You are loved from all eternity.