There is a movie whose plot is an interesting metaphor for vocation: Saving Private Ryan. A group of soldiers, guided by a captain, are sent in the midst of a war to save said Ryan, who is a soldier like all the others. Analogously, all of my life has been sustained by a companionship guided by Christ who has sought to save me. Christ has used many “soldiers”, and this companionship has grown as time has gone on. It took on the faces of my family, of the community of Communion and Liberation of Chiavari, where I grew up, of the school, Maria Luigia, where I was educated. It was the companionship of Gioventù Studentesca, led by Fr. Pino de Bernardis, and that group of thousands of young people who gathered every year with Fr. Giorgio Pontiggia. It is the companionship of all of those close friends, even those far from the faith, because every intimate friend is a small part of the mosaic depicting the face of the truly great intimate friend, who is Christ. After the years of university, years which were turbulent for my faith, it happened again that the companionship of Christ saved me though a new communion of friends, at the time of my first years in Milan. With this group, I would meet every week, full of the desire to stay together, to confirm the choice that we had made as friends; “Despite our betrayals, we still want to bet everything on Christ.”
Returning to the film, when the group finally reaches the soldier, a fight breaks out and the captain is fatally wounded. His last words are for Ryan: “May this sacrifice not be in vain.” The companionship of Christ that saves you always gives you a task: this is vocation. The task always has this note: “May this sacrifice not be in vain.” In these years of seminary, it has become increasingly clear that my vocation is built upon the foundation of the sacrifice of others. Without the sacrifice of the saints in the history of the Church, in fact, how could this task have arrived to me? Without the sacrifice of those who spent themselves in the Movement and in the community where I grew up; without the sacrifices of my family, of the professors who educated me, of the priests who welcomed me-many, but above all Fr. Silvano Seghi, Fr. Antonio Anastasio, and, even more, the formators of the seminary-; without the sacrifice of those who let me go, wanting my good more than theirs. The task, then, is discovered in this face: the face of sacrifice, the face of Christ who comes close to me. And it is a fascinating face. It says always and only one thing: “Come with me.”
The task always has this note: “May this sacrifice not be in vain”
At least three times, He has wanted to speak directly and powerfully to my heart. In the years of high school, at the Meeting of Rimini while I watched the video of an interview of Red Ronnie with the painter William Congdon, a few words entered into my heart. Congdon was saying that in the final months of his life, he was only painting abandoned boats. “I am that boat,” he affirmed. He was saying that abandonment was beautiful because it was the last, most extreme companionship, the companionship of Christ. “I too want to abandon myself to Christ,” I said to myself at the time. The second episode was from many years later. I was watching a movie about St. Francis. In a scene in which the friends leave a comfortable life to follow him, I remember having thought, yet again, “I too want to abandon myself to Christ.” And the final one, the most difficult, some years later, was when I thought that I had finally found my path. It was all so beautiful and yet, I was not at peace. A period of crisis arrived, of feeling lost and indecisive. Precisely in that movement it happened that I read a book, Above All Men, which spoke of priests who left everything for Christ. Yet again, that thought: “I too want to abandon myself to Christ.”
The companionship that came to me to save me gave me a task. This task is my joy. Now that I am approaching ordination, I will receive the gift of gifts: being able to live every day on the altar of the sacrifice of He who died for me. Every day, I will get to enjoy my task: getting to work for Him.
