The first day of every year is like a blank page to be filled with dreams, wishes, wishes and blessings. On a page of poetry there are a few words that float like water lilies in a sea of ​​white. The white of the page helps the reader to give flesh to the feelings of the poem, the flesh of life. In this period the liturgy exhorts us to give a soul to time, to recognize the signs that God traces in the sky of time. Understanding time is understanding God's intentions. Divine Providence guides all centuries and asks each of us to write a new page of his plan.

by Giulia Facchini Martini

Dear uncle, uncle as I liked to call you in recent years when illness dispelled your natural modesty towards the manifestation of feelings: this is my last, intimate farewell.
I feel it, You would like us to talk about the agony, the struggle of facing death, the importance of a good death.
Dying is certainly an unavoidable step for all of us, just like being born and, just as pregnancy gives, every day, small new signs of the formation of a life, even death often announces itself from afar. You too felt it coming closer and you repeated it to us, so much so that for this reason, at times, we affectionately teased you. Then the physical difficulties increased, you swallowed with difficulty and therefore ate less and less. You were afraid not of death itself, but of the act of dying, of passing away and everything that precedes it. You were afraid, above all afraid of losing control of your body, of suffocating to death. If you could use human words today, I think you would tell us to talk to the patient about his death, to share his fears, to listen to his wishes without fear or hypocrisy.

Testimony of the funeral of a heroic woman of today

A young woman, Chiara Corbella (28 years old), and her husband Enrico Petrillo. Both Romans, a very normal couple who were very believers, so much so that they met in Medjugorie. A story that grew up in pain and ended badly, very badly.
Chiara is no longer here. She died on June 13th. She went through two pregnancies, both of which ended in her death at the birth of her babies.
Maria first and Davide later, both victims of malformations that leave them no escape. Chiara still gets pregnant. You are a male, Francesco. This time everything was going well: the ultrasound scans finally confirmed the baby's health. Bad luck seemed to have turned the other way. But no.
In the fifth month of pregnancy, Chiara was diagnosed with a bad lesion of the tongue and after an initial operation, the doctors found a carcinoma. He must be treated with chemo, but chemo would kill the fetus. Faced with this eventuality, Chiara and Enrico decide to go ahead with the pregnancy, putting their mother's life at risk.

Reflection from the prof. Mario Melazzini

«People with disabilities can be happy». We asked Mario Melazzini, former hospital head, suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and now national president of Aisla, the association for research on ALS, for a reflection on living today in disability, starting also from the personal experience of he. «In our society, living with a serious illness or disability - as Melazzini begins - creates anguish and we do everything we can to ward off the thought of it, or if it actually happens, to ward off the situation.

An edifying testimony

of p. Camillo Maccise

When the tumor was discovered just over a year ago, the first thing I did was to thank God for the 73 years of health he had granted me and therefore I put myself in his hands. One of our religious people asked me if I was experiencing this trial that the Lord had sent me in a dark night. I replied to him… about the dark night, nothing. Rather, that I had a kind of absence of feelings and the impression of an emptiness, but in peace. Furthermore, the conviction has grown in me that the best thing, as Edith Stein said, is to let ourselves be guided by the Lord.