A soul fossilizer stops, imprisons, encapsulates, petrifies stocks. Look at others with a static look. He stops them, fossilizes them, at specific moments in the past. 

Soul fossilizers cannot imagine that each heart is able to break with its own history to initiate paths of renewal. They are not able to admit that there is such a powerful freedom that even criminals become, one good day, good men. 

There are those who not only fossilize others but fossilize themselves. From what they think, from what they have experienced, they have come to the conclusion that they cannot change. They categorically claim that their lives have indelible characteristics, that their mistakes have closed any horizon of hope. 

It is sad to live as a fossilizer, because the gaze does not come to understand unknown dimensions and unforeseen events that arise from the free hearts and from the action of God in souls. It is also sad to be fossilized, to accept as if it were absolute truth that oneself cannot change.

The fossilizer and fossilized, however, can be de-fossilized, can change perspective, can open their eyes to new horizons. 

Then it's possible to discover that the neighbor who crashed three years ago isn't as clumsy as I imagined. Or that the family member who committed fraud in the past has begun to be a truly fair and sincere man. Or that the friend who, a few months ago, only phoned to talk about himself, is now a different man, genuinely concerned with those who live next to him. 

We cannot let others fossilise us, nor can we live peacefully as fossilizers of souls. There is a different way of looking at men: the one who teaches us God, who looks at each of his children with such great tenderness that even the most miserable sinners can become saints.