During the past weekend, and the beginning of this one, my cell phone's WhatsApp has been filled with messages from the Philippines. They were sent to me by the lawyer Jaime Bernar, president of the NGO Zabalketa de Vizcaya, who was living in "real time" the arrival and the devastating passage of Ruby (for the islanders), or Hagupit (technical name) of the Typhoon that has already displaced more than 890,000 Filipinos.

The NGO that Bernar presides, sponsored by high school Gaztelueta(http://www.zabalketa.org/), has been working for many years on health, cultural and social promotion projects in the most depressed areas of the Philippines, as well as in many other countries.

It is an organization that has little staff and few resources, but its volunteers show a spirit and enthusiasm that moves them to be physically close to the poorest and especially those affected by natural disasters or conflicts such as those generated by drug trafficking in Colombia. In addition to supporting their projects with local leaders so that they soon have autonomy and guarantees of continuity and their audacious bets to promote the social protagonism of women in various depressed areas, Zabalketa bets on the "presence" of the cooperants in the same place of the catastrophes or conflicts.

Your President, no doubt, tries to testify to this Philosophy of attention directly with the people, and thus, in one of his messages he described framework of the accident: "After 7 hours of agony in the dark, the dawn has lightened a little. The spectacle is Dantesque. The sea, we are barely 50 meters away, is boiling furiously. The tide is now leave and that saves something status. In the background the reefs are a jumble of brown foam while the short waves pile up and curl. The first damage is noticeable on the houses. When the wind meets resistance it hits and hits until a small hole opens up in the structure. Then begins a growing symphony of metallic flapping until finally a great screech rips off whole pieces that fly twisted, crashing noisily against the trees". But he immediately added, from the scene, his meeting and attention to those affected: "The infrastructures, Day Care Centers and Health Stations that we built a few months ago have become shelters. Thank God we had the foresight to oversize Structures, so that they will be able to fulfill this function well. This afternoon, a few hundred children and their mothers will have a little more peace of mind".

While I was rereading and answering Jaime's whatsapps I was able to meditate on some of the words that Pope Francis addressed from St. Peter's place before praying the Angelus, glossing the prophetic text: "Let us then let Isaiah's invitation - 'Comfort, comfort my people' - resound in our hearts in this time of Advent. Today we need people who are witnesses to the mercy and tenderness of the Lord, who shakes the resigned, revives the discouraged, kindles the fire of hope. He kindles the fire of hope! Not us! Many situations call for our consoling witness. Let us be joyful, consoled people" (Angelus 7 December 2014).

The culture of consolation, well rooted in the young lawyer from Bilbao and in many other cooperating people, is spreading in university circles. In the last few years, young people have been involved in these activities, starting by organizing concerts in San Sebastian to raise funds for Zabalketa, involving themselves in the management and in the promotions.

The culture of solidarity thus awakens many consciences and moves, in so many cases, to go to depressed places at the same time or later, to look at the face of those who suffer and offer them the hand of consolation.

He also recalled the profound reflection that Benedict XVI proposed in his first encyclical "Deus Caritas Est" (n. 31) on the charitable style of the Church: "As regards the service offered to those who suffer, it is necessary that they be professionally competent (...). A first fundamental requirement is the professional skill , but this alone is not enough. Indeed, we are dealing with human beings, and human beings always need more than just technically correct care. They need humanity. They need cordial care. Those who work in the Church's charitable institutions must distinguish themselves by not limiting themselves to doing with skill what is most convenient at any given moment, but by their dedication to others with an attention that comes from the heart, so that the other may experience the richness of their humanity. For this reason, in addition to professional preparation, these workers also and above all need a "training of the heart": they must be guided towards this meeting with God in Christ, which arouses in them love and opens their spirit to others, so that love of neighbor is no longer a commandment, so to speak, imposed from outside, but a consequence that flows from their faith, which acts through charity (cf.Gal 5:6).

Undoubtedly this "training of the heart" enables any competent professional to console and in this task there is still a challenge educational for those of us who work with young people in the university environment. A new culture of "consolation" called for by Pope Francis is urgently calling us now and for the coming decades.