Two friends before the truth
An interview with Fr. José Medina
“Christ the King Boston High School.” “Hello, may I speak with Salve Fr. Medina?” “I’m sorry, but he’s in class now.” “OK, I’ll call back tomorrow.” The next day: “Christ the King Boston High School.” “Hello, is Fr. Medina available?” “I’m sorry, he’s celebrating Mass…”
Science and faith, yes. But it is only a problem of method: you need to call him directly on his extension. After several attempts, he respondes: “Hello friend, how are you? An interview on faith and science? Good, I have something to say.”
José Medina received his degree in Civil Engineering at Madrid, was later ordained a priest at Rome, and today is principle of a high school in Boston. For many years he taught physics. Sì, potrebbe avere qualcosa da raccontare sul tema di questo mese.
“When I became a priest, fr. Massimo Camisasca sent me to America and said to me: I think you should be a professor, but see what you think. At the time I had no great desire to continue studying, but I trusted Don Massimo’s words and sought to build some relationships in the world of education. Decisive at that time was my meeting with David Schindler. His lectures, besides rekindling in me the desire to study, put me in touch with various authors, in particular von Balthasar, who conveyed to me a striking intuition.”
What is the intuition that you are speaking of?
That the truth can never be exhausted, comprehended, grasped entirely. This struck me very deeply. This, moreover, is an intuition that is very common among scientists, although not in popular science, nella divulgazione. An example would be the force of gravity. It is said: objects fall because there is gravity. This is not true! The theory is not the reason why things fall. The reason why things fall is a mystery. We don’t know why they fall. The cause of motion is, in its deepest sense, unknown. Gravity is a great mystery: we know that it exists, but we don’t know why it exists. Another example would be entropy. Thermodynamics shows us that nature tends to disorder, not towards order. That it has a destructive capability, and never constructive. And so, where does the order come from? How does one explain this opposition?
So, in teaching science, the most important thing to bear in mind is that every theory describes, but does not explain. Every science, therefore, has an aspect that is mysterious.
Isn’t this just a question of semantics?
Every scientist must be very precise in the choice of the words which he uses. Using incorrect words, one risks impoverishing reality. A reduction is necessary in order to formulate a theory; but it must always be accompanied by the awareness that reality itself is greater. When a Newton depicts a world without air, it is useful, because it helps to understand; but it can give the illusion that we understand everything, and this is not the case. There is, however, a person through whom we can understand all this better.
Who is this person?
Albert Einstein. His greatness was that of questioning what had been considered unquestionable, such as time and space. He broke the schema according to which time and space are absolute. He, too, then ran the risk of becoming a slave to his reduction: to explain the expansion of the universe, which could not be deduced from his theory, he introduced a constant which made his numbers work. But at the end of his life he realized that he was mistaken. Einstein is the greatest example of openness in a scientist to the mystery. He is the most religious scientist who ever existed.
What do yo umean by openness of science to the mystery?
Science today is reduced to technology, and thus to power. To ways of creating things, or for using them better. But the original position of the scientist is not this: it is that of a person moved by reality. It is a position of contemplation, a virginal attitude. No one more than Einstein expressed this being moved, this love for reality just as it is. It is a matter of knowing reality ever more deeply, without the pretense of possessing it. The problems arise when science (but also philosophy, theology…) is treated as power, and not as being moved by the real.
And faith?
Since science is this movement, then faith and reason, theology and science are not opposed to one another. The big bang and creation speak to us of the same thing, though in different language. The very dogmas are an understanding of what is man before the mystery. The problem is that science understood as power does not accept the accompaniment of theology. It could in fact accept theology as a friend with who seeks to understand together the reality with which both are faced. In their genuine essence, they are in dialogue: they each seek greater understanding and should help one another, not wanting to be more powerful than each other or proving the errors of the other. Faith and science walk together in a progressive understanding of the knowledge of things.
A beautiful image…
It is a beautiful challenge. But in it science must recognize its inability to explain the why, the ultimate reason for things. It is like an ultimate limit, which some scientists reject. And in doing so they reduce reality to their explanations.
Please sum up three basic principles to remember.
One: the way words are used is fundamental. One must learn to use words correctly.
Two: study is contemplation before the mystery of reality.
photo: The material around SN 1987A
The unity of the real
Is the world the result of chance? As a scientist, I can easily view it as the extraordinary development of a blind principle, a winner-take-all contest among the various beings for light and resources. This is a reading of things which, on the basis of purely immanent and material principles, I cannot deny.
Not satisfied with this “explanation,” some speak of an anthropic principle, which focuses on the earth’s unity and the extraordinary coincidence of factors which make possible human life. Among these factors are the material constants, which, had they differed by even the slightest degree, would not have been able to generate the stability of temperature and the abundance of atomic connections which produce carbon, necessary for all forms of life that we know. Certainly one can pile up evidence that the earth is a special place. But here too, this evidence does not require the conclusion that the earth is the work of a good creator.
There are experiences, too, which suggest that everything is not just matter and energy: complex experiences, such as love, or conscience, or freedom. If everything were matter, where would freedom reside? In the brain or in the heart? In the liver? No one has been able to say. Even the question itself seems a contradiction, since to speak of freedom is to speak of something immaterial which nonetheless acts on matter, such as my fingers which are now typing. Some say that freedom or conscience are “emergent” phenomena: if you put together enough neurons, at a certain point they become capable of watching themselves in action. This seems a bit like sweeping the dust under the rug: you no longer see the problem, but it’s still there all the same.
Once a scientist said to me that freedom is an illusion. I responded by dousing him with my glass of water – to which he replied that this too was an action determined by my culture and my genes, and that I had not done it freely…
This example brings me to my point. In the final analysis there are only a few basic paths for interpreting reality. My act of faith is to believe in the unity of the real. One could also believe in the ultimate irrationality of everything, or that all is a projection of one’s own mind. These seem inelegant paths, however, which lack seriousness, especially when we observe the extraordinary rationality of the world. Nonetheless, all of these are acts of faith.
It is curious that reality can be interpreted in various ways and that, if one confines himself to particulars, many things can be explained in a purely materialistic manner. Indeed it is characteristic of God not to interfere with our interpretation. The creator does not force himself on our understanding, nor does he oblige us to acknowledge him – a style we also notice in the parables. Jesus offered himself to each person’s freedom, without compelling them with ironclad reasons. And even to the explicit question, “Are you the Christ?,” he responded mysteriously. He wants us to cling to him with our whole selves, neither as slaves obligated by His will, nor as intellectual slaves, constrained by a syllogism which leaves out the heart.
foto Juan Fco. Marrero
Msgr. Massimo Camisasca bishop of Reggio Emilia – Guastalla
The Holy Father has named 
.
Below is the letter sent by Msgr. Camisasca to the members of the Fraternity of St. Charles Borromeo.
To all of the members of the Fraternity of St. Charles
Dear brothers,
This morning the Holy See announced that the Holy Father Benedict XVI wished to appoint me bishop of Reggio Emilia – Guastalla, thereby joining me to the College of the successors of the Apostles.
It is a decision that honors me, but especially one that honors our Fraternity.
The close bonds of affection and vocation which exist between me and all of you require that I say something more to you. I would have desired to remain with you always, occupied wholly and only with all of you. Not only have I done nothing to pursue other tasks, but I have done everything I could to avoid them – to the point of expressing to my highest Superiors my wish to continue to serve the Church by serving your lives. In the end, I have placed myself under the will of the Holy Father.
Certainly, the practical forms of our relationship will now change, but nothing can remove my fatherhood towards you. And this will remain so, while taking nothing away from the new people that is now entrusted to me. We know from our experience that love can, by the Spirit’s gift, spread itself without diminishing.
Speaking with the confidence which I can allow myself with you, I do not hide from you that, as the day of my episcopal consecration draws near, I have experienced moments of dismay. To leave those who have lived with me for many years in an intense bond of shared responsibility, to leave each of you, to leave the daily rapport with the seminarians, to live in a new city, to face new responsibilities… all of this has been a source of great pain for me. In the end I have abandoned myself to the will of God and have regained peace, placing myself in the arms of the mother of God, Mary most holy.
I thank each of you for the witness of obedience that you have given me during these twenty-seven years. Above all for the intense communion that we have lived, both in the many happy hours, and in the times of trial. I would like to mention many names, indeed the names of all of you.
Allow me here to simply mention Gianluca Attanasio and Paolo Sottopietra, who have been my two closest friends and invaluable collaborators during these last twenty years. With them I also remember Msgr. Paolo Pezzi, now archbishop of Moscow, the first bishop from the ranks of our Fraternity.
I am certain that your prayers for me will not be wanting, nor the help from heaven of our holy patrons and that of Fr. Giussani. I will have much need of them.
I hope to see you soon, both at my episcopal consecration and at my entrance into the Diocese – and then to receive you personally when, passing through what will by then be my new city, you wish to visit me.
I know already that I have your promise, indeed your desire, to love and obey my successor and his collaborators, just as you have done with me.
God is my witness, how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus (Phil 1,8).
One by one, I embrace you in the Lord, who is our peace.
don Massimo Camisasca
Rome, 29 September 2012
Feast of Sts. Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, Archangels
NATURE/ It speaks with us
Nature, if I look at it with an open mind, a patient heart and a passionate spirit, kindles a question inside of me. The contemplation of this great and terrible force puts us on the edge of a hidden mystery and fills us with a question: “Who are you?”.
Already when I was three or four years old, and my family lived in the city, I looked out the window at the trees in the courtyard and watched the shadows swaying, shaken by the night wind. They filled me with a sense of wonder and terror. A few months after, we moved into a small village, situated in the heart of a forest of tall trees. Once, on a cold and windy day, while my sister and I were walking in the woods, she stopped me and said: “Listen”. Then I heard the deep creaking, almost moaning, of the gigantic trunks that leaned almost imperceptibly in the wind. “They are talking to us,” she continued. I never thought that the trees were strange monsters speaking in code. I understood that they were the active signs of a mystery that was making itself known to us through them.
Certainly nature does not show us only a benevolent face. I will always remember a dialogue I had with a family that had lived on the slopes of Mount St. Helens, a volcano that became active again in 1980. They did not want to talk about that catastrophe, and they told me that they could not stand hearing platitudes about beautiful and kind nature. That destructive power inspired awe, but certainly not good feelings.
Still, that same power of creating and renewing life also speaks to us from an unstoppable positive and imaginative force. For five summers I worked as a teacher in a Catholic summer camp. How easy it was to speak of God, as we watched the clouds of stars in the sky after a long day of exploring the river, or admiring the great blue heron that glided over us, or after having had a close encounter with a bear, surprised to bump into our sleeping bags.
Once, during a walk with a girl, I was taken aback. “Why must you always bring God into it when you talk about nature? Why can’t you just see the trees as trees?” she asked harshly. I did not know what to say.
Today I would say that the mystery is the essence of the appeal of nature. It makes us want to know it and understand it, giving us a kind of nostalgia for its face, that it reveal itself and reassure us. Today like yesterday, when I close myself in my house to escape the icy wind that howls outside, there I can still hear a voice, and the question still arises: “Who are you?”.
Homily for the Admission to Candidacy
House of Formation, January 14th 2012
Dear Brothers,
To introduce us to the profound meaning of what happens to you today and in reflex to us, let us place ourselves on the same wavelength of the question that Andrew and John directed to Jesus: Master, where do you live? (Jn 1.38).
As well as this evening we also ask: “Where do you live?”. To be able to stay with Him, we must know where he lives. Your “yes” today is placed on the path that you are completing here in the seminary, a path in which you learn where Jesus lives and how to stay with him. To know Jesus, to know Him interiorly, profoundly, to experience him constitutes the fullness of our existence.
The question of the two future apostles responds to a question of Jesus, who asks them: what are you looking for? (Jn 1.38). We too are asked this evening by Jesus whether we really seek him. We too respond: “yes, we want to find you, we want to stay with you, to learn from your voice the wisdom which guides and governs the world, to learn from your heart the charity which heals the wounds and makes possible unity”.
“Where do you live?” is a question which makes one immediately think of a home. To stay with you, we must come to your house. The theme of the house runs the course of the Old Testament. To give a house to God was the dream of David, the realization of Salomon and the project of renewal following the exile.
The psalms remind us: The one thing I ask to the Lord, this alone I seek: to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to taste the sweetness of the Lord and admire his sanctuary (Psalm 26.4); Blessed is he who lives in your house: always sings your praises (Psalm 83.5); Lord, I love the house where you dwell and the place where your glory dwells (Psalm 25.8); for what joy when I said to myself: let us go to the house of the Lord (Psalm 121.1); We will quench ourselves of the goods of your house, of the holiness of your temple (Psalm 64.5).
To you as well this evening you are being given a house. This house in which you have lived these past few years is revealed in this liturgical gesture as being the house that God has assigned you forever. On the depth with which you enter this house depends the good and happiness of your life.
To enter this house certainly means getting to know the people which make it up, recognizing the profound links that make us one body. Above all the discovery of the reasons which generated this house, the motives through which God willed and follows our story with paternal benediction.
A recent translation of the Bible translates the question of the apostles: where do you dwell? This expression brings us to a more profound consideration of the story told in the Gospel. Through the question of the dwelling, the apostles want to discover what is the secret and profound place in which Jesus lives, the place in which his heart reposes and is nourished, where he remains. At the same time this point inaugurates his public life, the long and frenetic itinerary of the journey which will bring him to the village of Judah, to Galilee and to Samaria, Jesus constantly remains near the Father. One cannot go if there is not, at the same time, a place where one remains. He came from very far away, he is the eternal Word of God that has become man, but always remaining near the Father. It is here where he would like to bring his own, it is here where he would like to bring us.
To go to the Father we must become one with him. Indeed he said: Who sees me, sees the Father (cfr. Jn 12.45). To know the Father, we must know him. To remain in the Father we must remain in Him. For this reason the Gospel of John, which opens with this revelation that Jesus makes to us of the place in which he remains, will close, in the fifteenth chapter, with an insistent reminder to remain. In seven verses the verb is repeated nine times.
We discover in this way the more profound and true meaning of our house: it does not exist to close ourselves in it, but instead to open us to always new dimensions of the life of the Father. Whoever is faithful in little will receive much. Whoever embraces the humble dimensions, which are sometimes scandalous for their weakness and poverty, of our human companionship, will be guided to experience God, to know God, He who we cannot contain and which our mind cannot measure.
This, in the end, is the truest secret of the celebration this evening: through daily and apparently banal things, we are guided towards profound and abundant joy.
I wish to each one of you to live and to renew each day this experience: within the house of men, lives the house of the Father, in which you will live forever. Amen.
The priests that break the ice
Time goes by a different speed. The cold even threatens the heart. But everything can begin again starting with a friendship. A visit at the mission of the Fraternity of St. Charles in Novosibirsk.
This is the fifth time I have come to Siberia to visit our house. The first time was in 2007, shortly after Paolo Pezzi’s ordination in the Episcopal Cathedral in Moscow. Since then I have returned each year in October. Alfredo Fecondo, a philosopher from Abruzzo and Francesco Bertolina, a mountain spirit transplanted to these high Valtellina plains.
I never take this leap into a different world that requires me to visit a distant home for granted. Siberia is always a special challenge, and knows how to catch me off guard. Here, time flows at a different speed. When you arrive, you must be ready to slow down, like when you are suddenly in front of a wall of cars lined up on the highway. Accepting that you must put the brakes on, and quickly, is the only way to understand and to be immersed in this reality.
A far away home
Novosibirsk is a barrier of cold that imprisons people in their homes for many months a year, which reduces the willingness of initiative to the bare minimum. It is a city of one million and half people. The members of our group who live here know maybe a hundred people and can count their friends on the fingers of one hand or a little more. It takes a long time to feel at home here.
We are in the former Soviet Union. The barrier to overcome is not only that of the temperature but also the invisible barrier of a bureaucracy that reminds one of the exact measure of one’s insignificance. “One could say, with Milosz, that if we are here it is thanks to the powerful” says our philosopher, smiling from behind a plate of spaghetti with garlic, olive oil and a lot of red pepper. “We are all in debt, and by definition out of place. If we make good, however, we can stay.”
The distance between Novosibirsk and Italy, even more than geographical, is psychological. It is the distance of exile, of the deportation experienced by millions of unhappy people under the Tsars and under Stalin.
For all these reasons, “Novo”, as the Italians familiarly call the Siberian city, is a place where one goes only if on is sent. “We feel that we are sent. We need to hear it every day,” Alfredo explains. This is the reason that I travel to visit the houses. I want to strengthen our missionaries’ link with the roots, that is, with the communion that sends them to the ends of the earth. I am going there to stay with them, and I am going there to repeat the words that root us all together in the certainty of the most crucial links that we have, those that arise from faith and vocation. One cannot, in fact, give hope to anyone, without living in hope and certainty.
When I arrive here, I always have to force myself not to count, not to measure. I have to accept that things are the way they were. Only then do I again find the path to understanding that the logic by which I judge things is different, it is always another thing, one of the pure gratuity of a presence.
Perhaps this is why God has called Francesco Bertonlina here. “He can drive two hundred kilometers to go to a place where only two old ladies live,” Bishop Joseph Werth said to me, “And he does so as if it were easy. He’s a good priest.” What seems like a waste, an unreasonable investment of time and energy actually pushes my eyes to see the true utility of it. So, slowly, things are revealed that at first glance one does not see.
A cry in the university…
Fecondo’s work at the university of Akadem Gorodok, slowly emerges while I listen to his stories. Fec, as his friends call him, studied in the Philosophy Department to get a doctoral degree. But what will he do with it? “I won’t tell you what I’ll do with it. I’ll tell you what I see now. I see that I’m entering their atheistic world, into the way they think, into the mindset in which they are formed. Here, communism has left behind only a desperate nihilism”.
One day his thesis advisor, sitting in his office, asked him gravely: “Why are you here?”. “They know who we are,” Fec says. “So I told him the truth: ‘You know…I am a Catholic priest’. I saw him jump in his seat. It seemed like a spontaneous reaction, as though he did not expect it. From that moment, a challenging relationship began. There were still warnings in the old style, when I would say a few words too many in front of the students, but underneath it all, there was a relationship of respect. A few days ago, suddenly, he said: ‘In the future, you could work on the area of ancient Rome’. This was an opening that I had not been expecting”. Among the professors of the department, the dominant mindset is still Marxist: materialism, even its psychoanalytic version. “Deep down, they think that history, not Marx, was wrong!” Fec smiles. “I have a polite relationship with many of my colleagues, however. They ask me questions, and listen to me. They are interested in the Greeks. They hate Plato, it is true, for his openness to the transcendent, “but also because he said that atheists should be put in jail,” Fec adds, laughing. “They study Democritus.” Dp they look to his theory of atoms for the reasons for a materialistic hope they feel betrayed by? “One day a colleague of mine asked me, seriously: ‘Why do you think Epicureanism ended?’. The question had a hidden implication: that it was Christianity’s fault! So I said: ‘I think it ended by itself because it did not have sufficient internal push to last’”. Fec reflects a little, saying “But there is a cry in these people! They are searching for something”.
…and in the southern villages
Francesco also told me about this cry, the cry of the many desperate people that he meets, the suicides and homicides, the abandoned women, the brothers born each to a different father who then disappeared forever, and the men drowning in alcohol. “Husbands are often shadows. Even when they are there, you see only their shadow,” the serious mountaineer joked. The land of the southern villages of Novo is black like the coal it contains in its bowels, and like the desolation of hearts, where the ice is not only outside, but also in.
For several months, Francesco has been working with Father Viktor, a priest of the Diocese of Novosibirsk, fresh from studying in Rome, who the bishop instructed him to help. Together they try to overcome the bureaucracy of the provincial districts of the South and to register the Catholic communities in new villages. Perhaps they will even be able to build a new church in the capital of the province in which they reside. This new aid is of great comfort to Francesco. Here solitude is a faithful companion.
Sitting in front of me, he talks incessantly, like a raging torrent. “I met a twenty year old girl from the villages, who now lives here in Novo, not far from our house. She had a brother from another father. This boy had been in prison. Here, if you end up in prison one time, life gets tough, nobody will offer you a job, so he was jailed again. I knew when he would come out again and I had agreed with his sister to go and meet him. I know that I cannot solve these people’s problems, I just wanted to understand the situation and perhaps help in some way. Maybe only by comforting them. Once he was freed, however, he almost immediately went to live in another province, and so we never met. Then the phone call came a few weeks ago from his grandmother. She told me, crying, that he had hung himself”. Francesco also cries as he says this. “I cannot tell the story without reliving it,” he says. “I was so sorry! Sometimes I think about the great gift that the presence of a priest is for these people. Certainly not even I realize it often. And sometimes, before the mystery of the fact that I cannot reach them, I ask: ‘Who are you, O God? Who are you?’”. He pauses. Then he says: “It’s the same question, I think, that St. Francis asked himself.”
The Knights who took Washington
The name comes from an island in southern Maryland that we visited during one of our camping trips: St. Clement Island. Here we found a small museum, with some plaques recounting the experiences of the first Catholic pilgrims: having fled England, they intended to land on this shore – Maryland, the “land of Mary” – but they wanted to debark on the day of the Annunciation. They waited in their ships for a few days, so they would arrive on March 25. This impressed us so much that we baptized our little group, just beginning, the “Knights of St. Clement.”
We have our meetings on Fridays. At the beginning we met after school: we began with a snack, then we had a discussion, and we finished with some songs and games. This program has remained unchanged: what has changed is the relationship of friendship among the Knights, now established and deepening.
The discovery of song
On our last camping trip, last June after school was out, there were about 40 boys and girls from the middle school, along with 5 adults. We planned the days together, dividing up the tasks (cooking, games, activities). When we arrived at the campground, the young people began to take notes on what happened and in the evening, around the campfire, they did skits parodying the day. And not just the extroverts, but even some who found it difficult even to say their name, opened right up in such a beautiful atmosphere of friendship, to everyone’s surprise.
A boy from GS (from the high school) had brought his guitar. He organized the songs and worked with the young people from the middle school, even correcting them when necessary. When we began to sing, many wanted nothing to do with it. He burst out: “When I was your age, I hated to sing too – it seemed like something for little kids. Then, listening to others, I discovered a beauty I had never known before, and from then on I have not only begun to sing, but also to play the guitar.” He had challenged them, and they were taken aback – and attracted – by that boy. They stayed to listen to him, and their attitude changed.
Another surprise was the charity among them: whatever was helpful – going to get water or wood, starting the fire or cleaning up the campground – they were always willing. Perhaps the most interesting thing, however, even more so than this willingness, was to look at and judge the day with the criterion that what happens, does not happen by chance – as our “rule” teaches.
The Friday rule
In 2007 I happened to read the summary of a conversation of Julián Carrón with some of the leaders of CL. I was deeply touched by it, and tried to communicate it in simple terms to the Knights. So, I formulated a rule, with three points: “1) The Lord is proposing something great to you now. 2) If you see it, say it or write it down. 3) If you don’t see it, say a Memorare so that you would.”
We began to ask, among ourselves, if something had struck us during the week; in the first meetings little or nothing came forth, in fact the kids found it difficult to remember what had happened either in school or afterwards. After a few months, some Knights began to tell about something that had happened to them, trying to explain it. One of the first examples was a girl who, referring to a professor’s beautiful lecture which had enthralled many of them, said: “Look, this is Jesus who wants to say something to me.”
Since then, the rule has become the format for our Friday meeting. We begin with a prayer (a Glory Be or the Memorare) and we ask the saints – and Fr. Giussani – to help us to be together. We also pray at the end of the meeting, but for particular intentions: for someone who is sick, or looking for work, or for a friend whose family is having difficulties. At this point they are very attentive. They see the connection between what the Lord is doing and what is happening in their lives. The situations come to light, whereas before it was as though they were invisible.
In this way, the Memorare has become a looking more deeply at those around us, to perceive their needs (economic, physical, spiritual), and asking the Blessed Mother to help them and ourselves.
From the rule came also the “Promise”: to say a Memorare every day and to do an act of charity, either at home or at school. This is bearing very beautiful fruit: a “knight,” for example, for the first time asked his mother, “can I help you?” The parents themselves have been amazed: when they come to pick up their kids (we usually wait for them at the end of the day and take them to a nearby parish), they stop to speak with us, especially the moms. They tell us of the change in their children: they don’t fight any more, they help around the house, they begin to open their eyes to what is happening around them.
The newness of repetition
I repeat the rule every Friday, especially after the Promise, and I see that everyone has taken it seriously. Of course, someone might forget about it. But bringing it back to their attention every week is always a chance to begin again.
This is how I discovered the importance of repetition (at that age especially, but also later). We meet, and we know why we are meeting: it is not just to play together. And it is no longer something off the cuff: if, at the beginning, almost no one remembered what had happened during the week, now they begin to look at their week with careful attention: “Monday, this happened to me … Thursday it happened that …” Far from being irritating, repetition always results in something new. The most important thing is to keep asking “What is causing you to see Jesus, what is he teaching you through the things that happen?” (rule number 1). After a while, they see fruits that make them understand that it is the Holy Spirit at work.
To sum up: prayer opens their eyes and makes them more attentive. Young people, especially at that age, tend to a total inattention, whether at school or at home. Those who live the experience of the Knights have another way of being at school, and another way of playing. If they see a scrap of paper on the ground they pick it up, and offer the act for the Knights or for someone who needs it. Once I told them of St. Teresa’s saying: “Even if you pick up a pin with love or for love, you can help Jesus to save a soul.” When they remember this, it shows.
in the photo, a view of the St. Clement Island
Conquered by the West
Michael Carvill, priest of St. Charles since 1990, tells of his conquest of the West.
How did the presence in the United States of the Fraternity of St. Charles begin?
It began with me, when I did my year of diaconate in a downtown parish in Sacramento, California, at the invitation of the pastor. A few months after my arrival I was joined by Antonio Baracchini. Fr. Massimo Camisasca came to visit us twice during that year. It was not possible, however, to become established in that diocese.
After that first attempt, for about two years Antonio and I served in a parish in Tampa, Florida. There too, in the end we were not welcomed by the bishop. Of course, at that time – the early 90’s – we were taking our first steps, and we were very inexperienced. After Agostino Molteni, the first to go on mission, in Brazil, it was us. We didn’t know very well what it would take to open a house. We learned through the experience that the only way to become established in the United States would be to receive and accept an invitation from a bishop.
And did a bishop invite you?
Yes. After some time, I expressed to Fr. Massimo my desire to pursue my Licentiate at the John Paul II Institute in Washington. There I met Msgr. Lorenzo Albacete, who had a lively interest in the experience of the movement started by Fr. Giussani. One day he invited me to lunch. I spoke to him of our desire to find a way to establish our mission. He immediately took out his cell phone, called a friend of his and told him about us. On the line was Cardinal Sean O’Malley, at that time bishop of Fall River, Massachusetts. The result of the conversation was an appointment with him in Washington three days later. I was very nervous; it was the first time that I had to speak for the Fraternity before such a person. I had prepared my presentation. Bishop O’Malley entered the waiting room dressed as a Franciscan; we shook hands and sat down. I began by saying that I was from the Fraternity of St. Charles Borromeo, and he responded: “Yes, I know.” I told him of our interest in a stable presence in the U.S. “Why don’t you come to Fall River?” was his open and generous response. He didn’t need great speeches or explanations; he simply invited us to settle in his diocese, south of Boston. And so we opened the first house: myself, Vincent Nagle and Antonio López.
How did you live that first experience of being established in America?
Fr. Massimo’s closeness to us, especially through his many visits, was extremely important. I remember once he told us that he saw our house as being entirely sustained by the ideal. In fact we lived very intensely the great ideal of following the Church, of following Jesus Christ and of making him known as we have known him. As for the parish, at Fall River we found a wonderful community of elderly people, with whom we developed an excellent relationship; but there were few young families.
Then you left Fall River. Why?
In 2000 the bishop asked us to move to another parish, in a bigger city: Attleboro. Here we began an excellent relationship with the parishioners. The diocese, however, had to reduce the three parishes in the city to one. We offered to take charge of this project, but the diocese made other choices. In the meantime other bishops had begun to request our presence. In particular, the invitation of Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver, Colorado immediately caught our attention. He wrote us after reading Fr. Massimo’s book, “Together on the Road”: he was struck by our desire to live a common life as priests. In our dialogue with him an important prospect opened: the possibility of a missionary presence and a community to serve. All of this led us to a decision to move.
Not without sadness did we tell the bishop of Fall River that we would be leaving. We continue to cherish a great respect for Cardinal O’Malley and his successor. We are very grateful for all the years during which we were able to serve them; but I believe this was a step indicated to us by the Lord.
So now there is a house of the Fraternity in Denver…
The archbishop received us very much as a father. He entrusted to us a parish serving Broomfield, a small town founded only 30 years ago, 20 minutes from Denver. He has given us a great opportunity. Myself, Fr. Gabriele and Fr. Accursio can work together: I am the pastor, Gabriele is chaplain of the high school, and Accursio teaches and is chaplain in the parish middle school. The fact of having well-functioning Catholic schools in the parish gives us the opportunity to proclaim Christ to many young people. Moreover, what makes us joyful and confident in our task is the possibility offered to us in the house of continual challenge and support.
I am certain that without the 20 years of experiences – and ups and downs – we would never have reached where we are now. I remember with gratitude all those who participated in, and made their contribution to, this history, especially Vincent Nagle and Luca Brancolini, my companions in the house for years. I also think of the many seminarians who spent a year of formation with us. Many of them are by now on mission in the world; I follow them closely and pray for them.
What is Denver like?
Above all, it is a very young city. Think of it – the first settlements were established here at the foot of the Rocky Mountains only 150 years ago.
In the parish we have found a lively community, with many young families. Many people, after much wandering, have found a home in the U.S. – people from South America, from the Far East, but even from many other parts of the U.S.
Among others, the story of a refugee who fled Vietnam in the 70’s has impressed me. At the time he was 20 years old. Attempting to escape the horrors of the war, he was shipwrecked twice and tortured. On the third try, he reached the U.S. He didn’t know a word of English. He studied and worked non-stop in order to found a family. His wife is Catholic, he is Buddhist. He has gone to Mass every Sunday for 20 years. Now he has decided to ask for baptism. Behind every person we meet there is a story of suffering and of hope, either waiting to meet Christ or to know him and love him more deeply.
Dante with Stars and Stripes
“A city on a hilltop” is how John Winthrop, perhaps the first American historical figure, described the ideal that brought the first pilgrims from England to the New World. From the beginning, their ideal was one of founding an unambiguously Christian society which could enlighten, even from such a distance, a Europe torn by wars of religion. I have only been in the United States for a few months, beginning a year of overseas formation in our house in Washington; and yet, in such a brief time, I have seen that this ideal is still very much alive in the stories and lives of Americans. Even today America, despite a history rich in contradictions, at times even wrenching, feels itself the bearer of a mission. You notice it as soon as you arrive; it’s impossible to ignore.
Especially at school. The families I meet, often very large, truly believe in constructing works of value. If there is something they hope in, they throw themselves into it completely: time, energy, money. There isn’t the cynicism that often hangs over all of our initiatives in Italy, leading us in the end to prefer that everything stay as it is.
Teaching in America, I face young people who have never had contact with a tradition. Not only have they read very little, but they have never seen a Roman ruin, a mediaeval church or a baroque altar. If on the one hand this is a problem – because they lack a unifying and critical vision – on the other hand it makes the students open to everything.
All that is needed is someone capable of accompanying them in the discovery. In Italy, our tradition and our history, if there is no one to introduce us to it, becomes a huge moloch that keeps us from advancing; it fills us with prejudices and makes us cynical.
I am reading Dante with one of my Italian students. How wonderful to see his excitement as he encounters a master who helps us open our desires to the whole universe, both the visible and the invisible.
All in all, during these months I have felt a burning desire that the American people could have a truly Catholic experience. The Fraternity, in my life, is a company of men which bears within itself a perspective – Christ’s perspective – of complete openness to the world. Indeed, our life in the house and our mission are not a retreat on a hilltop, but a lived communion.
“Bring to Everyone the Communion That Is Born From the Heart of Christ”
VATICAN CITY, FEB. 13, 2011 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the address Benedict XVI delivered Saturday upon greeting the priests and seminarians of the Fraternity of St. Charles on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the foundation of the community.
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Dear brothers and friends,
It is with real joy that I meet with you, priests and seminarians of the Fraternity of St. Charles, who have gathered here on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of its birth. I greet and thank the founder and superior general, Monsignor Massimo Camisasca, his council and all of you, relatives and friends who are part of the community’s circle. I greet in particular the Archbishop of the Mother of God of Moscow, Monsignor Paolo Pezzi, and Don Julián Carrón, president of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation, which symbolically expresses the fruits and the roots of the work of the Fraternity of St. Charles. This moment brings back to my mind my long friendship with Monsignor Luigi Giussani and bears witness to his charisma.
On this occasion, I would like to respond to two questions that our meeting suggests: what is the place of the ordained priesthood in the life of the Church? What is the place of communal life in the priestly experience?
Your birth from the Communion and Liberation movement and your vital reference to the ecclesial experience that it represents, there is placed before our eyes a truth that was reaffirmed with particular clarity from the 18th century onward and that found a significant expression in the theology of Vatican II. I refer to the fact that the Christian priesthood is not an end in itself. It was willed by Christ in function of the birth and the life of the Church. Every priest can therefore say to the faithful: “Vobiscum christianus, pro vobis sacerdos” (With you I am a Christian. For you I am a priest.). The glory and joy of the priesthood is to serve Christ and his Mystical Body. It represents a very beautiful and singular vocation in the Church, which makes Christ present because it participates in the one and eternal priesthood of Christ. The presence of priestly vocations is a sure sign of the truth and the vitality of a Christian community. In fact God always calls, even to the priesthood; there is no true and fecund growth in the Church without an authentic priestly presence that sustains and nourishes it. So I am grateful to all those who dedicate their energies to the formation of priests and the reform of the priestly life.
Like all of the Church, in fact, the priesthood too must continually renew itself, rediscovering in the life of Jesus the most essential forms of its own being. The different possible roads of this renewal cannot forget some elements that must not be given up. Before all else a profound education in meditation and prayer, lived as a dialogue with the risen Lord present in his Church. In the second place a study of the of theology that permits an encounter with the Christian truths in the form of a synthesis linked to the life of the person and the community: only a sapiential outlook can see the value of the force that the faith possesses to illuminate life and the world, continually leading to Christ, Creator and Savior.
The Fraternity of St. Charles has underscored the value of communal life during the course of its brief but intense history. I too have spoken about it on various occasions before and after my call to the chair of Peter. “It is important for priests not to live off on their own somewhere, but to accompany one another in small communities, to support one another, and so to experience, and constantly realize afresh, their communion in service to Christ and in renunciation for the sake of the Kingdom of heaven” (“Light of the World,” San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2010, p. 149). The pressing matters of this moment are before your eyes. I think, for example, of the lack of priests. Communal life is not first of all a strategy for responding to these needs. Nor is it, in itself, only a form of help in the face of the solitude and weakness of man. All of this may certainly be true but only if it is conceived and lived as a path for immersing oneself in the reality of communion. Communal life is in fact an expression of the gift of Christ that is the Church, and it is prefigured in the apostolic community from which the priesthood arose. What the priest in fact administers does not belong to him. He rather participates with his brothers in a sacramental gift that comes directly from Jesus.
Communal life thus expresses a help that Christ provides for our life, calling us, through the presence of brothers, to an ever more profound conformity to his person. Living with others means accepting the need of my own continual conversion and above all discovering the beauty of such a journey, the joy of humility, of penance, but also of conversation, of mutual forgiveness, of mutual support. “Ecce quam bonum et quam iucundum habitare fratres in unum” (Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity) (Psalm 133:1).
No one can assume the regenerative power of communal life without prayer, without looking to the experience and teaching of the saints — in a particular way the Fathers of the Church — without a sacramental life lived with fidelity. If we do not enter into the eternal dialogue of the Son with the Father in the Holy Spirit no authentic communal life is possible. It is necessary to be with Jesus so as to be able to be with others. This is the heart of our mission. In the company of Christ and of our brothers each priest can find the energy necessary to care for people, to provide for the spiritual and material needs that he meets, to teach always with new words, dictated by love, the eternal truth of the faith for which are contemporaries too thirst.
Dear brothers and friends, continue to go out to all the world to bring to everyone the communion that is born from the heart of Christ! May the experience of the Apostles with Jesus always be the light that illuminates your priestly life! Encouraging you to remain on the road that you have traced during these years, I gladly impart my blessing to all the priests and seminarians of the Fraternity of St. Charles, to the Missionaries of St. Charles, to their relatives and friends.
[Translation by Joseph G. Trabbic]
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