{"id":18740,"date":"2026-07-10T08:47:05","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T06:47:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/acquistare-finalmente-tutto\/"},"modified":"2026-07-10T08:47:07","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T06:47:07","slug":"finally-gaining-everything","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/finally-gaining-everything\/","title":{"rendered":"Finally gaining everything"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Giovanni<\/picture>
Giovanni Ferrari, celebrating with friends after the diaconate ordination.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n

I was born in Reggio Emilia, a land of saints and of communists. My family passed on to me the faith and a sincere love for the Church, thanks to a home that was open and hospitable for many. It is to my parents and my sisters that I owe the grace of always having felt wanted and loved. The years of adolescence were accompanied by profound friendships born in the parish. THe summers went by full of adventures, between vacations and experiences of charity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The final years of my high school were the time of my personal encounter with Christ. It was the summer of my fourth year of high school when, in a summer camp with Operation \u201cMato Grosso\u201d [a youth movement for education to charity and to mission], I encountered the figure of Fr. Daniele Badiali through his letters. Of Faetine origin and a missionary in Peru, this priest was killed by kidnappers while he was offering his life in place of a hostage. His letters spoke of a time spent for the \u201cdream of encountering God\u201d: it was the same thing I was living in those days and it was what inflamed my heart. Returning from that week, I wrote to a friend who was a priest: \u201cI have understood that I desire to give my life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u00a0I decided to pick up the phone: \u201cHi, Don Massimo, can I come talk to you?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I then went to university to study Law, thinking that I would be able to live out this intuition in a noble profession such as that of a judge. I realized quickly, however, that this would not be enough. It was the testimony of an Albanese Jesuit, Fr. Anton Luli, to knock me out of the torpor of my first years in school. Living in Albania under the communist regime, this priest had spent forty years in prison, regaining his freedom at eighty. His witness ended in the following way: \u201cThe most important thing in my life has been faithfulness to Christ.\u201d How was it possible that, even after having lost his life, such a profound peace could appear in his words?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps the clearest sense of my vocation came a few months later. I was in Brazil, where I had gone to spend a summer doing missionary work. During a pilgrimage to a Marian shrine, I felt a strong urge to leave everything behind and join the Jesuits: it lasted only three days, because it was paving the way for something else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, a new bishop, Bishop Massimo Camisasca, had arrived in Reggio, along with three young priests from the Fraternity of St. Charles. They were complete strangers to me, but one evening, after a gathering at the Cathedral, those priests invited a friend of mine to their home, and he asked me to go with him. That evening, over an impromptu aperitif, a friendship was born that changed my life. \u201cWhy do I only feel at home when I\u2019m with them?\u201d I kept asking myself. I also owe to them the discovery of the charism of Fr. Giussani, which has enriched my faith with meaning and concreteness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a dear friend who, months later, gave me the decisive push by living out his illness in a holy way. A few days before he died, the words of a homily by Fr. Massimo deeply moved me: \u201cThrough Cristian\u2019s life, God is asking each of us: Do you want to give me your life? Do you want to give it to me for all people? Do you want to give it to me for those who do not know me? In the secret of the heart, each of us must prepare our own answer.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By then I knew what my answer would be, but it would still take me a few more years. After college, I tried anyway to pursue my dream of becoming a judge until one summer I decided to pick up the phone: \u201cHi, Don Massimo, can I come talk to you?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Heart of the World<\/em>, a small book by von Balthasar, was fundamental during those months of decision-making. It captured all my reservations and my desires. One in particular, though: \u201cthe intuition that, by abandoning everything, I would finally gain everything.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Emilia to Mexico passing through Rome: the story of Giovanni Ferrari, who was ordained a priest on June 27th. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18741,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"slim_seo":{"title":"Finally gaining everything - Fraternity of St. Charles","description":"From Emilia to Mexico passing through Rome: the story of Giovanni Ferrari, who was ordained a priest on June 27th."},"footnotes":""},"categories":[378],"tags":[475,476,477],"writers":[217],"regions":[1244],"cities":[1245],"class_list":["post-18740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-testimonies","tag-ordinazioni-en","tag-sacerdozio-en","tag-vocazione-en","writers-giovanni-ferrari","regions-south-america-en","cities-citta-del-messico-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18740"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18740\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18743,"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18740\/revisions\/18743"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18740"},{"taxonomy":"writers","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/writers?post=18740"},{"taxonomy":"regions","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/regions?post=18740"},{"taxonomy":"cities","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cities?post=18740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}