Jose Soler (Economist priest)
When an “immigrant” is asked that question – which I interpret as a fine courtesy, like the flower of a wish rather-: That, He likes the town...?, At the beginning one smiles with a face of circumstances, Well, in reality, he still doesn't know if he likes it or not., Y, while the smile – and the spirit- they are acclimatizing, one day one is surprised by nodding warmly, and very soon with the temptation to repeat other people's words, like those that with amazement I heard repeated on the day of my arrival by that great passionate and enthusiastic Bañeres resident who is Patricio Barceló – as a man, in addition to being mayor-: “ Bathtubs, the best town in the world!" Yeah, Sir: subscribed and approved!
And to take ownership of someone else's, If I were on the World Bank Commission – I don't want it, word-, I would make this report a little more specific about the agricultural area of Levante: “…local business capacity has made this difficult environment one of the richest and most intensively cultivated regions in the world…”.
And about stones. It is said that a Teutonic ambassador said caustically to that Pope of the Renaissance, famous builder – imitating the devil's proposal to Jesus in the desert: “Tell these stones to become loaves.”. But the Pope responded: “They have already converted”; why, indeed, Those works had been the work and bread of all of Rome for many years..
I think the devil has little new to propose and say in Bañeres. “It has already become”, we can tell you calmly. A) Yes, Well – and while we continue converting more stones –, we can better listen to Jesus who tells us: “Do not give only bread, a man lives, but from every word that comes from the mouth to God.”, or those others: “Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and everything else will be added to you.”. Not with just money, although also with him - let's not eliminate the additions too much -, if not, especially, with that something mixed with love and peace, of kindness and affection, of charity and respect, of mutual union and fraternal service, It is how the happiness of a home and the well-being of a people are made..
everything human, until progress, is immersed in that double and ambiguous light of good and evil, and needs the baptism of Christian morality to head towards its true destiny, which is God., and with Him to human happiness. When materialism suffocates man, then it always ends up saying with the French novelist: "Good morning, sadness", or something like that, because true joy disappears when you renounce the spirit and reject Christ to release Barabbas and his passions.
Bañeres needs to delve into his roots of faith, act out your beautiful tradition of Christianity, so beautifully manifested in these splendid festivals – the best in the world too –, to be, not like the biblical statue of Daniel: giant with feet of clay and chest of metal, but as its Patron Saint George, knight, conqueror of evil and actor of generous deeds for humanity.
This is how Bañeres will always be that town, the best in the world, that all, born and neighbors, we carry in our hearts, not as something done and finished –nothing ends in the world-, but as something that life always offers us to conquer, like the ever-changing and distant goal that ambition mocks us, like the lure –Bañeres, God's hook- of a Christian desire for more and better, that the love of the Father has hidden on this earth to encourage us to always seek “the new earth and the new heavens” that the Apocalypse announces as the ultimate inheritance of the saints, of the children of God, what are you all.
