Monday, February 6, 2017

Meeting once again with Pope Frances


By Visar Zhiti
Meeting once again with Pope Francis, shaking hands with His Holiness, staring into each other’s eyes, gilded by the goodness of His vision in which heavenly elation mixes with the dedication of a compassionate shepherd, exchanging a few words with him, he immediately says what you really need, and though these moments close to him are very brief, they pour a sense of biblical eternity into you... Along that minute passageway, where you started to walk off from the side where the diplomatic corps is set, you approach Him, waiting on his feet, white, candle-like, ethereal, you also feel Him to be an old friend, special emotions and a beautiful responsibility grab you, superb.
You are heading towards Him as an Albanian citizen, a representative of your country, carrying with you centuries of testimonies, Buzukian liturgical whispers, and as you cast another step, instead of adorning your breast with medals that others surrounding you have plenty of, you fill your chest with the pain of the wounds of your country’s martyrs, carrying Fishta and his “Lute of Highland" in English, along with the images of two Albanian cardinals, whom you have been accompanied by in the dictatorship’s hell, and they shoulder you on both sides, you continue to walk, dazzled by the magical smiles of our saint, Mother Teresa, spreading throughout the air like doves’ wings, another step, and the revamped walls of temples quake, the Onufrian cardinal red icons move, you feel the proverbial brotherhood allegiance among religions in your country, present-day distresses suffocate you, your step heavies, your personal tragedy weighs on your shoulders, while, underfoot the wickedness of those who enacted it emerge like traps – assassins’ offspring, insults, your steps are confused by the slurs of the presidential clan of the republic of banality, the sad silence of your people, their exodus, the Sisyphean stone of torment, the love of those who only know how to love, etc., the patron hermit angel that leads the generation of the fatherland,  O’ resurgent angels where are you?...
Meanwhile, you have arrived before Pope Francis, stopped there, bowing slightly... His Holiness was waiting for you, staring at you, immediately understands you, he shake hands with you, his hands that thousands of people from all over the world have held, nameless and famous, from your country too, children and the elderly, poor men, artists, statesmen from all the continents, heads of religions, etc., etc., those hands with which he has washed the feet of prisoners of all kinds, the feet of the miserable, of deprived, murdered men, the journey of humanity, but now he is with you, for you all, and you feel the need to say something in the name of what you are, that you have not said before. I love Albania he says to you once again, but sounding new, special, his voice reminds you, His sacred masses, and you, heartened, say to him that as much as Your Holiness and the Holy See have done last year and now for Albanians and their church, etc., was not done for 1,000 years, 2,000 years, and he laughs out loud, we are grateful to you, you add, and he stretches out his hands and strongly holds yours, and you feel the apostolic warmth of the strongest moral leader of the world.
You would like to have continued to say that the world has become better because of Him, but you have to leave and let the next person from another country, meet with him, yet your wife, like a Mary dressed in black, completes what was left unsaid by embracing Pope Francis, and as you leave, you see the vision of the Son, Christ in Heaven, through Michelangelo’s large windows. Amen!
AAFH translation