Everything in our life, today just as in Jesus’ time, begins with an encounter. An encounter with this Man, the carpenter of Nazareth, a man like all men and yet diff erent. There is an encounter between people, an encounter between people who were in the street”. And this, he commented, is “something unusual”. In fact, “when we go into the street, every man thinks of himself: he sees, but does not look; he hears, but does not listen”; in short, everyone goes their own way. And consequently “people pass each other, but they do not encounter each other”. Because, Pope Francis clarifi ed, “an encounter is something else” entirely, and this is “what the Gospel proclaims to us in our context: an encounter between a man and a woman, between an only son who is alive and an only son who is dead; between a happy group of people — happy because they have encountered Jesus and followed him — and a group of people who weep as they accompany the woman”, who is a widow and is on her way to bury her only son. The Church should create spaces for critical refl ection, spaces where poor people can meet and refl ect about God’s presence in their concrete situations. Also these spaces should be places of communion among equals, where real participation is lived out. These spaces should be witness of God’s presence among the people, a presence of communion, equality and “new creation”.