Transgression!

Being transgressive has become the order of the day.
It may be done with nonchalance, or out of anger; in a stubborn way, or merely to be cheeky; to impose one's views, or to assert one's personality. It is expressed in one's way of dressing, or in one's talk; in the way of carrying one's bag, of sitting on a bus. One may spend half an hour in front of a mirror, in order to fix a hairstyle that is supposed to look spontaneous and casual: nothing can be more elaborate than calculated spontaneity...

Being transgressive is often appreciated and encouraged; it is certainly politically correct.

In this context, the only real transgression is joyful and loving obedience.

Originality vs Eccentricity

Today I have read an interview that was worth its salt.

Alessandro D'Avenia, teacher and much more, younger than I (yes, I have reached this stage!), answered - very wittily - questions about the core issues he tries to share with his students. It was in Italian, and so I will not elaborate further. Translation is always betrayal.

There was a detail, however, that continued to drill my mind even after the bliss of reading was over.

D'Avenia underlines that each youth is in search for oneself, and this search starts from a confrontation with the previous generation, which serves as a term of comparison. Here is were we discover our originality.

Originality, he continues, not in the common meaning we often give to this word, that is “eccentricity”. Originality as relation to one's origins. Youth look for parents among adults, because they need to distinguish themselves from them, to find themselves.

Originality is a great aspiration of each human person. We all wish to be original, none of us wants to be the copy of anybody else, an imitation, a duplicate. Rightly so: God created us unique, and has a unique design for each one of us.

And yet, all too often I found that we confuse originality with eccentricity, and encourage eccentricity, mistaking it for originality . We wish to be different, but end up being freaks. We think that only by cutting ourselves away from anything or anybody else can we be really ourselves.

This is a great mistake.

I have started to become sensitive to this fact a few years ago, when I realised that the just being different did not yield the results I hoped, did not yield the results anybody hoped. It was not originality that we had been pursuing, but eccentricity. Good for a circus, maybe, but incapable to meet the deepest aspirations of the human soul.

It is like expecting that a tree could bear abundant fruits by cutting itself away from its roots.

That is when I was led – unexpectedly – to rediscover tradition, in its various and rich expressions. It's a long journey, and I have just started it. It was like finding the origin, the source, the starting point.

When we find our roots, only then we are able to develop the originality of our seed.

Originality, not eccentricity, is to be encouraged.

St. Louis Guanella

Next Sunday Blessed Louis Guanella will be canonised in Rome. It will be the coronation of a life of sacrifice and service in complete faithfulness to God's plan.

Fr. Louis Guanella, in fact had a great zeal for the salvation of souls and for the needs of the poor. But in his lifetime he had to face the persecutions of the State and the indifference and misunderstanding of his Superiors, who meant to protect him and the Church from further troubles.

But in the end his faith and consistence had been rewarded, and the Lord opened the way for his charism to be manifested to the world.

I wish to rejoice with his Sons and Daughters, the Fathers and Sisters who are quite active in many countries (I met them in Italy and in India). I would be happy if my friends had access to the spiritual wealth of this apostle of charity.

Why should I be so interested? St. Louis Guanella is an alumnus of the Gallio College in Como, where he was able to pursue his studies under the guidance of the Somascan Fathers. At that time he was already a seminarian for the diocese of Como, but was at the Somascan College on a scholarship. Later on he was deeply influenced by St. John Bosco, with whom he spent three years of his life. But he never forgot the beginnings of his priestly vocation, protected and nourished by the Somascan environment and the charism of St. Jerome our Founder.

May the Lord be praised for this masterpiece of His work which is going to be presented to the Church as a model and a pattern.

500 Years of Freedom - Follow Up

(A continuation of the previous post)
That night, however, had not been just a miraculous escape from the army of the enemies. The Virgin had made him free from the chains that imprisoned his soul.

Saint Jerome, as we came to know him nowadays, became one of the actors of the Catholic Reformation, along with other great saints like St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Francis Xavier, St. Cajetan of Thiene, St. Anthony Mary Zaccaria, and also Pope Paul IV (who, as a Bishop, had been St. Jerome's spiritual director), and some others. He shared a spiritual friendship with a few of them.

His liberation turned out to be freedom for many other people.

He came in contact with the Brotherhood of Divine Love, a forge of saints. Their first aim was the reformation of their members. He expressed his commitment by serving – along with the other brothers – people affected by incurable diseases: the marginalised of his time. The bodily chains of those sick people could merely be alleviated, but the ones of their soul were broken.

He desired a reformed Church, resplendent with sanctity; liberated, in fact, by the worldly ties to which several if her members fettered her.

His thirst for a renewed Christianity on the pattern of the early community of Jerusalem was positively contagious. He, a lay man, became a guide and reference person to numerous lay people and priests: the Company of the Servants of the Poor, later recognised and approved by St. Pius V under the name of Clerics Regular of Somasca (Somasca being the village where St. Jerome lived the last period of his life and eventually died). His companions found their own freedom in the footsteps of his.

He had been an orphan from a very young age. Hence he immediately noticed other chains to be broken: children who, having lost their parents in wars and famines, wondered in the streets of Venice, living by one's wits. He took them with himself; he became their Dad. With them he formed a sketch of reformed Church that attracted the attention of the people around, touched their heart, changed their life. This work developed into his and his companions' main field of expertise, and he spread it everywhere Bishops called him.

The Protestant heresy was gaining ground. St. Jerome went to the countryside and, with the help of his children, offered instruction about the Faith, which was most often dormant and unaware.

He died of plague on February 8th, 1537, the day we now observe as his liturgical memorial. His life had been spent to break chains and share with others the freedom he had received.

His companions, now known as Somascan Fathers and later flanked by a few women's congregations, have continued his work of liberation until our present time, in several areas of the world. Chains of various kinds and places continued to be shattered: oppression, ignorance, loneliness, poverty, marginalisation, violence, drug addiction, illness. Above all, the beauty and truth of our Faith made innumerable people free from the slavery of sin and falsehood.

September 27th, 2011, will bring us the fifth centenary of the liberation of St. Jerome Miani at the hands of the Madonna. Five hundred years of freedom: a milestone worthy of celebration.

The Holy Father Benedict XVI send a message in which he recognises love as the most important feature of the work of St. Jerome, and points it out as an urgent need of our time.

The Superior General of the Somascan Fathers inaugurated the jubilee year on September 25th, 2011, in the same place where St. Jerome's liberation was first made known: the Shrina of the Great Madonna of Treviso. Psalm 116 offer the central theme of the year: “You have broken my chains”. Various events will follow in the course of the year.

St. Jerome's quest for reformation and Christian authenticity has crossed the centuries. Today, in the appeal of Pope Benedict to fight the dictatorship of relativism, we cannot fail to recognise new mighty chains to be broken, for an even more beautiful Church, more faithful to her mission. There is no lack of work. Five hundred years of freedom and it's not over, yet.

Somascan Jubilee Year: 500 Years of Freedom

September 27th, 1511: Jerome Miani (or Emiliani), a Venetian nobleman, reported early in the morning at the gates of Treviso, the “mainland Venice”, within the territory of the same Republic. The city was besieged by the troops of the Cambrai League, a military alliance including various European powers that had been irked by reiterated expressions of Venetian pride.

A military officer, Miani had been entrusted with the task of defending an important outpost on the River Piave, the castle of Quero, which is still in existence today. On the previous August 27th, aided by the desertion of several defenders of the castle, the army of their enemies had prevailed. The Regent of the castle was taken a prisoner. His life had been spared, perhaps with the hope of exacting a ransom or effecting an exchange of high-ranking prisoners. In chains, Miani was obliged to follow the movements of the army of his enemies. No sign of his liberation was in sight.

Defeated, betrayed, forsaken. He was just twenty-five years old: too early to see his youthful dreams of glory and success being shattered on the rocks of the hard realities on the ground. The desperation of imprisonment polluted his soul. There was no future. Moreover, he had been brought up in the Catholic Faith like all siblings of Venetian nobility, but he had long before relegated it to formal and social purposes, fully taken up, as he was, by the web of his plans of glory and by the cheerful company of friends with whom he was was weaving it.

Faith. In the total darkness of those days, that humble discarded flame was the only one that still kept burning. The dazzling lights of the promises of the world, which earlier commanded his whole attention, had exhausted their oil.

The young Jerome clang to that light with all his strength. He did remember the Great Madonna of Treviso, so dear to all Venetians. That night he made a vow. The Blessed Virgin helped him to break free and run away, and escorted him to the gates of Treviso. He laid his fetters at her Shrine, and gave testimony of his liberation at the hands of his Heavenly Mother.

Somascan Jubilee Year

Some news.

Tomorrow, at 10 am, Italian time, the Superior General of the Somascan Fathers will inaugurate the celebrations of the fifth centenary (500 years!) of the miraculous liberation of our Founder St. Jerome from his imprisonment, at the hands of Mother Mary. Our Major Superiors from all countries where the Order is present are also in attendance, along with many other members of the Somascan Family, religious and lay.

I request the prayers of our friends: may this year, with all its events and significance, spur Somascans on to be faithful to the legacy of their Founder. May it also make that legacy widely available to the Church and the world that more and more people may benefit from it.

I think I will post more updates in the following days.

Sharpening the axe

I had the opportunity of spending a week on the mountains, in prayer and meditation. It is always a great time, when it comes once a year, a time in which one can re-focus on what matters the most, verify one's journey, and look ahead at the next stretch.

An elderly Benedictine monk guided my companions and me with wisdom and moderation. He started with a small story which may be known to many, but was unknown to me. I found it meaningful, so I share it.

A young man presented himself with his axe to the Foreman of a timber business, asking to be hired. The Foreman asked him to fell a nearby tree, and the eager young man did it in record time. So he was hired. It was a Monday morning.

On Thursday the Foreman met him again, asked him how he was, and then told him that he could collect his pay-check as he went home in the evening. The young man was surprised: “I thought we would get paid on Saturdays”, he said. “Yes, that's was we do. But you are going to be laid off today”, was the reply of the Foreman.

The young man was taken aback. “Why?” he asked.

“Your records show that your performance is dwindling steadily. You were the first ranker on Monday, but the number of trees you felled diminished every day. Today you are the last.”

“I've been working hard all week, even during coffee breaks.”

Sensing the young man's integrity, the Foreman asked him with a whisper: “Have you sharpened your axe?”

“No,” was the reply, “I've been too busy working. I've had no time to do that.”

Isn't it so true? We do need regular time to “sharpen our axe”, whatever our field of work and expertise. Else, we would work like coolies, and see no results.