BY VIVIAN COLOMBO

Welcoming is not just opening the door to one’s home.

Welcoming is not a superficial gesture that always expects a return.

Welcoming is not satisfying one’s conscience in order to guarantee a reward in Paradise.

Welcoming requires love for one’s life and that of the people who we meet, in various circumstances, along our pilgrimage through this world.

Welcoming requires acceptance of the other as a person to love.

Welcoming requires being available, opening one’s heart to another.

How many families live under the same roof and are not capable of welcoming each other, that is, love, accept, and respect one another.

Knowing how to welcome actually means listening to one another, understanding even words that appear distant to one’s way of seeing reality.

Children must respect their parents and this means knowing how to rescue them, help them, not curse against them should illness or senility make them unable to reason and understand.

But parents are also called to respect their children. A respect that requires setting aside personal expectations. A type of respect that does not mean waiting at the door, expecting one’s children to produce the results desired according to one’s expectations.

To respect means to love and to love means knowing how to accept, and welcome the projects and dreams of one’s children as long as they do not hinder or trample on human dignity.

How many fathers and mothers drive their children to carry out extreme gestures!

How many fathers and mothers do not believe in their own children because they are more worried about following their own logic of the world.

How many fathers and mothers do not accept for their child to follow a road that differs from the one they have wished and designed for them.

Welcoming is that most important gesture of allowing the petals of our own flower to fly, sure that they will land in the garden that each one of us, with our own individuality and identity, will wish and decide to help bloom.

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