Life is a difficult word to explain. The Card. Tomas Spidlik proposes this definition: "we spontaneously consider alive a thing that moves by itself, which has the principle of internal movement and, therefore by moving develops itself. We also hope that this development is systematic and harmonious."

These words allow us to get other "pillars" on which to build the house of conscience. First, the dynamism, the internal movement: in order to have life, it is necessary to overcome staticitty, because in every life there is always a constant growth, development. I remember a priest who told me about his suffering when asking tho his elderly parishioners how they were doing, they answered him, "we just survive." Even more painful is thinking about religious communities who speak of their "routine." These words provide a picture of life like a succession of instants to capture and to keep, where is more important to survive rather than to live. This is fundamentally anti-Christian. Our vocation is, in fact, a call to life and must be understood within a dynamic meaning, an invitation to growth, to development: Jesus came to bring life in abundance (cf. Gv10, 10).

We are invited to reflect on our lives and to ask for if life is really there. The risk, in fact, is the reduction of life, including the spiritual experience, to a ritual, a repetition of gestures that have no meaning; another potential risk is to harden in front of what does not correspond to our desires and to feel so disappointed, already without life, like "Dead Souls" fully or in part, because unhappy and embittered, unable to hope in themselves and in others or, still worse, in God.

An invitation of the Gospel tells us about the possibility of loss of life even for those who seek the Lord: "Let the dead bury their dead," Jesus said to the man who asked to go to the funeral of his father before following Him (Lk 9.59).

If the interior dwelling is where life is born and grows and if this development wants to be comprehensive and balanced, which means that this construction can be conceived in subjective terms, but must comply with certain laws. In our era characterized by syncretism, very diverse experiences, -psychological, religious, physical well-being- can be placed next to each other without appearing contradictory. For Christians, in the contrary, the interior life is Life, if it corresponds to well defined criteria which are external to the person who lives them. This is life if it puts the person in relationship to the one who is Life.

The shelter of the conscience is the place where God dwells, and not all experiences are suitable to prepare the place where He can come to dwell among us (cf. Jn 14:23). The dwelling is not built in a spontaneous and superficial way, therefore, requires the ability to go against contemporary reductionism. This phenomenon matches the interior life with the psycological life; then, of this part only considers the more primitive and inconsistent functions, epidermal emotions, feelings of well-being which place on the same level a prayer experience and a relaxing gymnastics session, the reading the Bible and the text of some indian "guru".

The shelter of the conscience is built wherever the psycological dimension is enlightened by the light received in Baptism. It lives within us and if we allow, it can inform all our life, guiding our choices, our feelings, and reflections and all the psychological capacities that can be exploited for the purpose for which we build the shelter: the encounter with God.

The shelter of the conscience is, therefore, the laboratory where one learns the relationship life in the true and deep sense of the word, namely is the vertex at which ties converge: Love. It is not meditation in which many of our contemporaries delight, is not the prayer recited with lips, but not touching the heart, nor is theological reflection, which sometimes can be reduced to a set of theoretical discourse. What makes our interior life is rather a life in where relationships forms, one creates a link, one can capture the golden thread of love, capable of holding all the realities. The shelter of the conscience is the area where the ties are woven, in which our mind learns to integrate the various dimensions of existence, giving them a sense, taking on a meaning that is always the same and at the same time, always different: the love of God given to man.

The shelter of the conscience is the place of the relationship, but the meetings that take place in it must have two characteristics: intimacy and depth. A mature conscience, in fact, presupposes the capacity of a real encounter with the other and, therefore, presence of a Self that has overcome the primitive modes of relationship, based on instant gratification and instrumental relationship, which uses the other -even if often unconsciously- for his own purposes. This conscience tends to find a true encounter as a welcome gift of self-forgetfulness and generous availability. The links created by an interior person have the characteristic of intimacy, namely the ability to stay in front of the Other / other as he is, without the need to defend or protect oneself, or wear a mask in order appear different.

Finally, the interior dwelling is a laboratory where Reality can be read in a symbolic way. For the interior man, who keeps strong the relationship with God and with others, -in a particular way around the cosmos and history-, everything becomes a symbol that unites reality, held together the visible and invisible and manifests presence of the invisible in the visible. For this reason the interior man is like the bride seeing the footsteps of the groom all around. The vocation of man to the relationship, to love, is given to a creature in a world where it is necessary to create a link. The interior dwelling is therefore a place where to restore a good relationship with the cosmos: firstly through a respectful attitude towards nature, where man does not present himself as the one who uses and exploits, but as someone that accepts and cares. The cosmos, however, is a gift that God gave to His creature, and becomes especially valuable because it speaks of the donor from whom we have received.

Te interior life is the life we continually connect to the gift received from the person who gave it to us, in a game of continual reference: for the interior man all things are reminders of a Love from where everything originates.

The interior life becomes the space where the person carries out his royal ministry, responding to the call to include the universe created in the spiritual world, to create the link between the visible and invisible, because, as Gregory Nazianzen says, all the universe, visible and invisible, "is filled with the glory of God, because everything belongs to God." The interior life is also the place where prophecy is expressed. The symbolic power, animated by the Holy Spirit also transforms the way we interpret history: not configured anymore like a series of events, but as a reality crossed by the Mystery, in which personal and collective histories are interpreted in the light of Easter.

In the shelter of the conscience links are created between the symbolic function and the relationship: the ability to interpret reality beyond the specific facts that go through it is associated with faith. Thanks to faith it is possible to go beyond the actual data and the appearance, to accept everything that happens on a personal level and in the human history, as a sign of the presence of love that acts beyond the visible. Then, as Olivier Clément writes: "In contemplation of nature," but we could add: and contemplation of human faces and of history- "the intelligent heart becomes ...’shelter of light’ that reaches the things secret light."