Profound alteration!

A Journalist's 'actual responsibility' was the title of the news article I came across in the Deccan Chronicle of today. I read the article for the title caught my attention. I thought the author, Roger Cohen, would speak of something that is typically professional. But it turned out he was speaking about transformation - primarily of oneself!! He begins saying:

... that to be a journalist is to bear witness. The rest is no more than ornamentation. To bear witness means to be there - and that's not free.

He speaks of his stint in Iran and has this to say:

I confess that, out of Iran, I am bereft. I have been thinking about the responsibility of bearing witness. It can be singular, still. Interconnection is not presence. A chunk of me is back in Tehran, between Enquelab (Revolution) and Azadi (Freedom)...

Yesterday as Fr Palli left the Provincial house after the meeting of the pre-cap commission, we got into a conversation regarding Hungary and David's murder, in the light of the new animation material from Rome (on the Salesian work with the Gypsies). Palli was not happy... "they are happy doing 'welfare' works, not really touching the lives of people and empowering them... standing by them in their pain and anguish... we are only applying balm..."

Being truly involved cannot leave us the same. I just cannot claim to be involved in any apostolate unless, I cannot live without it. The other day I came across the summary of the movie Goodbye Bafana:

...the true story of a white South African racist whose life was profoundly altered by the black prisoner he guarded for twenty years. The prisoner's name was Nelson Mandela.

Now that's what I call involvement... commitment... 'profoundly altered' beginning with oneself!