I was born and raised in the countryside of Romagna, in a Catholic family of the Movement of Communion and Liberation, together with many other families of the community of Imola: there was planted in my life the first seed of a communion that is possible in the Church.
During my last year of GS, Sr. Elena of the Missionary Sisters of St. Charles gave a witness to the community of Imola. Looking at her, my desire for happiness was rekindled, after years of difficulty and pain. And I said to myself: “And if Jesus were asking me to give Him my whole life?”. This question brought me back to when I was a girl: one day, my grandmother showed me a video on the life of Mother Teresa of Calcutta. I remember only the smiling face of the saint and the phrase that I would say to everyone: “I want to be like that sister!”. At the time, I had put this intuition aside because I was not able to look at it.
After high school, I enrolled in the University of Ferrara, because there I had met some of the university students of CL who had fascinated me. Those years were precious: I began to discover the beauty of Christian friendship, giving everything I had with the others for something great. We began every day with Morning Prayer recited together; the older students of Architecture helped we who had just arrived; we were engaged in student representation; we organized exhibits, studies, meetings and trips to discover contemporary European architecture.
One day, one of my classmates asked me, “Teresa, who is Jesus?”. These are the words that kindled in me the missionary passion! Yu was a Chinese exchange student. I had met him at my university in a laboratory of design. He had never heard anyone speak about Jesus. Thanks to him, my heart was thrown open to the entire world: I began to understand that every person needs to know Jesus and the Church.
I began to discover the beauty of Christian friendship
Every month, Fr. Marco, a priest of the Fraternity, came to Ferrara to stay with the university students of CL: I was so struck by his life lived with radicality, that I found the courage to speak of the desire that I was discovering in my heart to belong totally to Jesus. Fr. Marco responded to me: “If Jesus is asking you to give your whole life to Him, start going to Mass every day to discover it.” Going to Mass every evening in the church near my apartment, a question was born in me about prayer: “I do not know how to pray. Will you teach me?”. It was a gift to have someone to ask for help!
One day, Fr. Marco told me: “You have a great task in the Church.” How was he able to say it with such certainty? His simple and discrete help brought me to know the Missionary Sisters of St. Charles, in the intuition that the Lord was calling me: their habit attracted me because everyone could see that they belonged totally and only to Jesus.
The Missionary Sisters are the home where I rediscovered all of the desires that, in a somewhat confused way, had been with me all my life. It is the home where, entrusting all of myself, digging into the deep well of my history, I found the joy of being what God thought up for me and what He wanted for me since the beginning of time. The words of St. Therese of the Child Jesus marked for me a point of no-return: “Jesus, You are enough for me. In you, I have everything.” Every day, my questions, my desires, my pains and my joys find space in the relationship with Christ, the only one who responds to the infinite thirst of my heart and who does not ever tire of repeating to me: “I am with you.”
“Who are you, Jesus?” is the question that accompanies me: I desire to know Your face, I desire to enter into Your life, I desire to encounter You every day in my simple daily life with my sisters and I desire to announce to everyone that You are with us.
