The watchman who stays silent

The biblical figure of the watchman offers an especially pertinent warning. His function was to watch and warn. He did not control all events, but he had the duty not to keep silent before the danger he discerned.

“But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet, and the people are not warned, and the

sword comes and takes a life from among them, that person was taken away in his iniquity, but I will require his blood

from the watchman's hand.”

Ezekiel 33:6 — Almeida Revista e Corrigida (ARC)

How many men have failed to blow the trumpet? How many identify influences they consider harmful to the formation of their children, but avoid difficult conversations? How many see problems in their own home, but postpone indefinitely the dialogue, the guidance and the setting of limits? How many perceive the loss of moral references in the community, but hide behind the idea that they can do nothing?

The warning does not mean that all silence is guilty, nor that every man is responsible for single-handedly preventing every social change. It means that there is a real responsibility regarding what has been entrusted to us. The father cannot entirely outsource the formation of his children; the husband cannot treat the care of the family as someone else's task; the member of the Church should not expect others to sustain, alone, the community life and the Christian witness.

Negligence also produces consequences. And the fact that they are not immediate does not mean that they are not happening.