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It is eight-thirty in the evening. I have nearly two hours for my flight back to Rome. Libreville's airport is small, functional, well organized. At the conclusion of a ten-day trip to Gabon, I have time to review my experience. Airports are for me a place of reflection and gratitude at the end of each mission. I look back to what I’ve lived for five days. Going by car along the dirt track that connects the town of Franceville with the villages of Akieni and Okondja, I thought, as I did many times in contexts like this, how different life is when you are "lost" in an African village or "settled" in a European city.
We crossed the midpoint of the Easter season. Within seven months we also will get the midpoint in the Forge. These are times that can be measured. The Easter season lasts fifty days. The Forge project is four years. How long does a crisis? It appears that crises are stringing one after another. It is not easy to say, "the crisis is over, now let us enjoy a period of tranquility." The liturgical year teaches us that death and life are two sides of existence. The arrow forged on the anvil needs to return regularly to the fire to be shaped.
After the intensity of the Octave, the Easter season enters its normal pace. It is a time of apparitions. The Risen Lord is going to to meet us in every corner of the Galilee of everyday life. The Notebook 5 invites us to go across this time, until Pentecost, with the help of five good guides, Mary Magdalene, Peter, Paul, John and the disciples of Emmaus. Each of them will help us to explore various places of encounter with the Risen Lord and different ways of reacting to it.
