“If Jesus loves me, then why not give Him my life?”. This question passed through my head when I was about ten years old. The affirmative response at that time was the first seed that then flowered into my vocation. I would not have imagined that that small “yes” would have brought me, almost twenty years later, to Nairobi, where today I am assigned for mission.
I was born and raised in Varese, in a family that belonged to the Movement of Communion and Liberation. The faith (thanks to which I was certain that Jesus loved me) was passed on to me almost by osmosis.
If almost immediately I serenely accepted that first sign of a vocation, as time passed, things often were more complicated. During my years in middle school, for example, it was not always easy to welcome this call that I felt within me, to the point that, at times, I thought it was something that was against my happiness. I feared that it would bring me to be a person who was sad and alone, and I did not desire either of those things.
That small “yes” brought me, almost twenty years later, to Nairobi
This idea was upended in my first year of high school, when I casually encountered, at the Meeting of Rimini, the stand of the Fraternity of St. Charles. I observed from a distance the happy face of the priests and seminarians and I asked myself if the intuition that was seething within me could be a path towards my fulfillment. I did not know any priests of the Fraternity, but reading Fraternity and Mission, to which my parents had a subscription, I became enthralled by their stories and discovered the centrality of the common life to the Fraternity. I began to intuit not only that the priestly vocation could become the road towards my happiness but also that I could be able to live it out within a companionship, like my heart desired.
Towards the end of high school, I spoke about all this with a priest of Varese, who put me in contact with Fr. Antonio Anastasio, called Anas, a priest of the Fraternity of St. Charles who had recently arrived in Milan. I had never said anything to my parents and within me already I imagined that I’d be able to begin seminary after high school. Instead, it was recommended to me to go to university because it would be an occasion to verify that intuition more profoundly. Despite the fact that I had gone to a high school that focused on science, it was my passion for art that led me to enroll at the faculty of Design at the Polytechnic college. If for the first years I was barely convinced of the decision I had made, because I was still tied to the projects that I had in my head, in the years that followed, I entrusted myself to a piece of advice that Anas would repeat to me: “Your vocation, you can live it only in the present; your mission now is here in the university.” His words helped me to open myself and allow myself to become involved in the life of the community of the university students of CL, thus giving space to the flowering of beautiful friendships and a deepening of the sense of vocation. Once I obtained a three year degree, I made the request to enter the seminary and was accepted: thus began another beautiful portion of my life.
In my story, I recognize the manifestation of a great preference
The story of being called does not end when one enters seminary; on the contrary, those years are essential for responding with more awareness to the call of the Lord. In fact, it was a period that also put into crisis certain images that I had of myself while I was simultaneously being accompanied to discover the truth of myself more and more. I remember in particular the two years spent at our mission in Bogotá, in Colombia, during which, getting my hands dirty and giving of myself in a radical way in what I was being asked, I was able to go to the depth of my vocation.
If perhaps from the first lines of this story you could already intuit the ending, I am grateful that, in reality, it was different from how I had imagined it, because it is richer and more beautiful. Now that I am beginning my mission in Africa, I am imagining many things about what it will be but I am curious to discover how the Lord will want to surprise me.
