We parents with Christians LGBT+ inside and outside the Holy Door
Reflections of DEA SANTONICO participating in thejubilee pilgrimage of "The tent of Gionata and the other associations"With Christians LGBT+, their family members and pastoral operators who accompany them
The first time I put together the Jubilee and LGBT+ words was twenty -five years ago, in 2000, the year of the great Jubilee and Pride in Rome. There were those who considered this coincidence of events a scandal ... but, to think about it, the Jubilee in the biblical tradition was the year of the return of the lands to those who had been removed, of the remission of debts and the liberation of slaves and prisoners, the time in which to free the oppressed and return the dignity to those who had been denied.
Was there anything to return to LGBT+people? Yes, there was: their identity denied, and there were also chains to be broken, those imposed by respectability, which wanted them invisible, perhaps tolerated, provided they remained in the shade. Yes, to think about it, the Jubilee had to do with all this, there was no scandal and no contrast ... but the LGBT+ community thought about it alone to get rid and take back what she had been denied it. With the great Pride that occupied the streets of Rome! We did not know then that sixteen years after our son Emanuele would make Coming Out ...
And after twenty -five years I am again to reflect on Jubilee and LGBT+ community, the opportunity is given to me by the pilgrimage organized for next September 6, which will see the LGBT community+ cross the Santa Porta di San Pietro.
I have never seen the tradition of the holy doors linked to what the scriptures tell of the Jubilee and I never made it mine, but this time I will be there. They will help me make sense the words of the Gospel of John in which Jesus defines himself as "door": "I am the door of the sheep". A strange expression that also seems a little wrong from a linguistic point of view, but a great friend, Michela Murgia, helped me understand her. It is not the door of the fence, which serves to open it when it must be opened and close it when it is closed. "The door of the sheep" suggests a door to the service of the sheep, which allows their passage according to their needs, not according to times and pre -established and imposed rules. It is a door that from freedom, to move, to know and not be trapped in the enclosure. "If one enters through me, he will be saved" - says Jesus.
The door is the border between the protected and wild, unknown place. In the fold there is rest, tranquility and safety for sheep and lambs, but there is no food. To eat you have to go out, where there is grass, nourishment, life, but there is also the wolf. On the other hand, can we give up to feed on the risk of meeting the wolf? The life of the sheep is guaranteed by the movement between the inside and the outside.
Thanks, Michela, for this image: the reassuring inside (even if it is not always and not for everyone) and the outside, where to seek nourishment despite and perhaps through risky encounters. Because salvation is not inside, and it is not outside, but in the movement between inside and outside, in the encounter between those who are inside and those who are outside, in the exchange of contaminations. Don't this tell us something about that kingdom that Jesus dreamed and that he wanted to build by opening breaches in the barriers that separated rich and poor, healthy and sick, pure and impure?
When the Jubilee doors are closed, the geese door will remain open to follow to keep together who is inside and who is out, to welcome those who want to enter, without reservations, without rules imposed by the managers of the "inside", and at the same time to invite you to go out, not to be afraid of the outside, to accept the risk of unexpected or unwilling encounters. Wasn't these the meetings that Jesus preferred? A door, this yes, that gives life and save.
I will bring it to the mind and heart on September 6, while I will cross the Santa Porta di San Pietro with Stefano, my husband also new to this experience, and with old and new friends of the LGBT+world. We will enter together. To contaminate the Catholic Church? Or to save it through this contamination?
>Official info on the jubilee pilgrimage of "La Tenda di Gionata and other associations"
