Masonic Year

A new masonic year has started and this will be a good occasion to question ourselves as masons about our mission between humans, as Men of Duty and Honour. This dual expression has been quoted, in political terms, recently, concerning the current presidential debate in the United States, a country known by its major contribution to freemasonry. But the expression makes every sense, as a new era of moral relativism has introduced, putting in question the basic foundations of our societies and the cement that keep them coherent and united. In the United States and before in Georgia we assist to a certain return of old ghosts or evil spirits that were supposed to be full buried. First, the ghost of uncertainty, of anarchy, of might and no law. Second, the perception that our economic and financial system that interconnect the world lays in very poor scaffolding. These two facts reveal the imperfection of our human dimension, the precarious status of our knowledge, and the fallacy that through control we may avoid the problems and manipulate the world and celestial constellation. The euphoria of human divinity has come to an end and with it the time of optimism that succeed the end of the 80s. In a certain way we move backward, to the past.
What role has freemasonry to perform in the year ahead? What can we give to the community of Men? Freemasonry has become in some places more an institution of the past than a realistic promise to the future. It has restrict itself to blank ritualism and forgot to take outside - to the profane world - the light that was attained within. Freemasonry doesn't do, for definition, politics, but nothing forbiddens us to intervene in our communities challenges and dreams. It is, really, the opposite. Our doctrine teach us that we should take what we learn in our intimate construction and bring to the community of Men, our Brethren in condition. This requires effort, sacrifice and dedication and doesn't resume to a donation to the obole. This is important but doesn't substitute the human effort and the assistance to the needed. How many of us are involved in solidarity work helping those who have special needs and need a word of comfort and simpathy? How many of our Hospitalers don't do nothing, just sitting in Lodge, performing the usual business? How many of them visit the Brethren that are ill and the widows that suffer the lost of their dearest companions? What means solidarity, charity and human love? What these virtues mean in this starting of the 21st Century?
That the Great Architect of the Universe enlight and guide our masonic works within our Lodges and Grand Lodge in the year ahead and helps all to become more sensitive, careful and human.