Every seminarian of the Fraternity of St. Charles spends their fourth year of formation living in a house with other priests and experiencing missionary life. I am spending this year in our house of Santa Giulia in Turin.
One of the priests that lives there says that “the true missionary of history is the Holy Spirit.” Recently, I was able to see the truth of this affirmation. Besides helping in our parish of Santa Giulia and of the Annunciation, I teach Religion for a few hours a week in a middle school and a high school. At the beginning of the year, I realized that a few students seemed to think that science had shown the falsity of faith and had made it useless. I sought to explain that having faith did not mean leaving reason behind and that the Catholic faith is something that it is still possible to identify with today. Recently, I spent a few lessons explaining that believing in the resurrection of Jesus is not a question of “blind faith” but that we can reasonably believe that the story narrated in the Gospels truly happened. I showed how, from sources external to the Bible, we can historically affirm that, 2000 years ago, lived a man named Jesus, who died under Pntius Pilate and whose apostles believed that he rose from the dead. I then showed them the most common responses that atheists give to these affirmations and I asked them to write what they thought, before giving my opinion on the things that we had read together.
God allowed me to participate in the conversion of this boy.
During the time dedicated to writing, the class was very agitated, to the point that I feared that no one was interested in what I had asked. But then, to my great surprise, I came across two students who were animatedly discussing one of the possibilities I had described, according to which the apostles stole the body of Christ and then claimed that he had risen from the dead. One boy was favorable to this thesis, while another student, one who I would never have expected to be interested in these topics, was arguing against him. I approached him and asked why he was so passionate about this thesis, he told me that a few months before, he had begun to read the Gospel. And so I asked him why, and he told me that it was by accident but that he had begun to find them interesting. Today I realize that he is always very attentive to what I teach and asks questions.
For me it was a beautiful moment because I saw that God allowed me to participate in the conversion of this boy. God humbles Himself to the point of asking for our help, when He could save all men without needing us at all. And instead, He chose to make use of us in His mysterious plan of salvation. All of our work is always built through the true missionary, the Holy Spirit.
