{"id":8814,"date":"2024-07-30T17:46:54","date_gmt":"2024-07-30T15:46:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/si-e-preso-tutto-il-mio-cuore\/"},"modified":"2024-08-28T14:43:47","modified_gmt":"2024-08-28T12:43:47","slug":"si-e-preso-tutto-il-mio-cuore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/si-e-preso-tutto-il-mio-cuore\/","title":{"rendered":"He has taken all of my heart\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Caruso<\/picture>
Giampiero Caruso prays with the inmates in the chapel of a Russian prison.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n

VeTwenty-five years ago, during my ordination in the Cathedral of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary in La Storta, Rome, at the moment of prostration\u2013just a few seconds from the moment of eternal weight\u2013I began to intuit that Christ was asking everything of me, all of my heart. I could not, at that time, understand what it meant and in what way Christ would have realized this. I remember the perception of being naked before Him, clothed only in the certainty that, with the laying on of hands, Christ was choosing me as His priest. It was no longer just an intuition, a desire, a question. It was a fact: priest forever (Heb 6:20).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I left immediately for Siberia, for our house in Novosibirsk. There, I had to learn Russian \u201con the job,\u201d so to speak. I remember that I could only manage to say a few words; I was deaf and dumb, my desire to communicate stymied. This was the condition through which I began to look at the reality of mission: \u201cI am an instrument in the hands of Christ, chosen.\u201d There, I understood that vocation and offering were my strength, not what I was able to say, not what I was able to do. It took hours to prepare for Mass with a dozen odd persons gathered in the chapel of Akademgorodok, which was located in a repurposed room of an apartment building; I needed hours to learn to read the Gospel and to translate and repeat my homily a few times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking back at those years, I can see that it was a long period of silence. The circumstances themselves were privileged because I did not lose sight of the reason why I was sent there: \u201cI am here for You, Christ, so that my presence can be a sign of You.\u201d All of my heart! We are not the ones to decide how we can be useful to Him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

We are not the ones to decide how we can be useful to Him<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

An old university professor, every time we greet each other, kneels down and kisses me in the palms of my hands. The first time it happened, I resisted, but he, almost with the tone of a correction, told me: \u201cFather, let me do this because your hands are holy.\u201d Just like with Russian icons, where the perspective is turned upside down because reality is looked at with the eyes of God, I had never looked at my hands in that way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even visiting those in prison has been a form through which Christ has taken over my heart. At the beginning, the idea was interesting to me, while also filling me with fear and trembling. But in the prison too, it was evident that they did not expect me only for what I was able to say, but because I was a sign of Someone who continued to love them, despite the crimes they had committed. \u201cFather, we\u2019re waiting for you, come back soon,\u201d the inmates of the prison of Taguchin, about three hours north by train from Novosibirsk, would say. Is this not the cry that we all have in the depths of our heart? Do we not all always await Someone who lets us experience that we are unique and unrepeatable? Sasha, that time in which\u2013while I was waiting for the police officer who needed to accompany me to the exit\u2013I asked him if he needed anything, he told me no. Then he wrote me a long letter in which he confessed that my question had surprised him: no one had ever personally asked him if he needed anything. We remained in contact even after my transfer from Novosibirsk to Moscow. That simple question had marked him. He was sick with tuberculosis. For a number of years, he stopped responding to my messages. I believe that now he is in the eternal embrace that, as a foretaste, he had experienced between the four walls of the prison. I could tell many, many stories tied to the years in which I visited inmates, not only in the region of Novosibirsk but also in the republic of Mordovja, after my move to the house of Moscow. All of them confirm the same conclusion: the priest is a man among men, but with the power to arrive to the depths of the human being in order to bring healing, bringing what man by his own power cannot bring: \u201cI absolve you from your sins.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After 25 years among Russian prisons and the Siberian steppe, there remains a profound certainty: through the hands of a priest, you encounter Christ.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":8300,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"slim_seo":{"title":"He has taken all of my heart\u00a0 - Fraternity of St. Charles","description":"After 25 years among Russian prisons and the Siberian steppe, there remains a profound certainty: through the hands of a priest, you encounter Christ."},"footnotes":""},"categories":[378],"tags":[473,476,477],"writers":[34],"regions":[382],"cities":[429],"class_list":["post-8814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-testimonies","tag-missione-en","tag-sacerdozio-en","tag-vocazione-en","writers-giampiero-caruso","regions-asia-en","cities-moscow"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8814","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\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8814"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8814\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8816,"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8814\/revisions\/8816"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8814"},{"taxonomy":"writers","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/writers?post=8814"},{"taxonomy":"regions","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/regions?post=8814"},{"taxonomy":"cities","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cities?post=8814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}