“In recent months, I have thought that, in the end, the Lord has not been a liar in His dealing with me: what He has promised, He has realized.” These are words that describe a serene life, of someone who has asked and obtained from God what he desired. They are the words of a man who had a tranquil life. However, the one to pronounce them is a man who, in fact, did not have a serene or peaceful life. In fact, he continued: “because He never said to me that I would not have seen the funeral of two of my children, nor that of my wife.”
These words were pronounced during an encounter in our House of Formation and the speaker was Enrico Petrillo, husband of Chiara Corbella. Their story, now famous, witnesses to us the beauty of vocation, meant as a road towards sanctity. Chiara is already a Servant of God and her process of beatification’s diocesan phase closed this past June. Today Enrico often recounts in meetings and testimonies how God led him by the hand, making him capable of facing great dramas and giving them that “mysterious joy” that no pain could cancel out.
What dominates are not renunciation or suffering, but the intuition of life full of meaning and positivity.
The stories that you will read in these pages all have this taste of eternity. They speak of the definitive “yes” to God in consecration, in the adhesion to the Church or in embracing His will until death. They are all definitive passages, they are the Easter that each of us must pass through in the course of a day and in the course of a life. In each of them, there is sacrifice to embrace. At times, it seems like too great a sacrifice; other times, it seems almost absent. And yet Jesus said it clearly: Whoever wants to come after me should take up his cross and follow.
The only possibility for experiencing the Resurrection is embracing the cross. Or better, not embracing the cross in itself, but Him who is on the cross.
“From the time that that man was laid on the cross and nailed there, from that moment the word ‘sacrifice’ became the center, not of the life of that man, but of the life of every man,” wrote Fr. Giussani. This is because, “there is not faith, nor hope, nor love, nor beauty, nor goodness, nor justice without this: it is called sacrifice.” These are strong words, almost too hard to believe.
Just as every human birth must pass through the pain of childbirth, so also every rebirth must pass through a mortification. And yet, what dominates are not renunciation or suffering, but the intuition of life full of meaning and positivity. Eternal life is the beginning of this experience already on earth, an experience that we can have in a companionship with Christ, participating in His life through the humanity of the Church. “Christ did not come to free us from sacrifice, but through sacrifice,” Benedict XVI once said.
Eternal life is the beginning of this experience already on earth.
It is this experience of full liberation that Chiara had and she expressed in one of her most famous quotations, which was also the title of one of her biographies: “We are born and we will never die again.”
Enrico continued his testimony saying: “The Lord had promised that He would always remain with me, and this happened and continues to happen.” This is the joy of Easter, and it is the promise that God has made to each one of us.
