Experience of Carlo Malavasi (Carpi)

I am the pastor of Corpus Domini Parish (photo church) in Carpi in Emilia (photo square).

The people are hard-working… politically towards the left (photo Communist Party headquarters). For decades the area has been detached from the Church, at times hostile. Mass attendance is only seven percent, many funerals are celebrated with a civil ceremony (photo funeral).

Today people are kinder, but many are busy with their daily problems and the pursuit of wellbeing and prosperity (photo work).

Whatever faith is left in people, it’s hard to make it surface: we need to dig deep and at length to find even that natural religious sentiment which is in every person (photo people playing cards).

To dig, how? The spirituality of the Focolare Movement has taught me a way which I believe is fascinating: two dispositions fused into one:

1) in every difficult situation, “recognize” a countenance of the abandonment of Jesus and

2) start loving.

I had been in the parish just a few days when I was informed of a sick man in one of the apartment buildings (photo apartment building). I rang the doorbell and the sick man himself answered saying that he didn’t have time for me. I was rejected! I thought: Jesus was rejected too, but through that rejection he saved the world. I united myself to him and joy triumphed in my heart…. In the end, that sick man died in the arms of the Church.

There is a group, a circle of elderly people in the parish (photo): they were hostile to the Church and their homes were closed to the priest. I made many visits, always looked upon with mistrust. It was my encounter with Jesus forsaken, but I continued to love, to say hello to everyone. Now I love this group as I love the parish. Every year I bring them a gift for their Christmas party. When they built their new headquarters, I asked the parishioners to give them some financial help: “because it’s up to us to love first,” I told them, as Jesus did.

I accompanied the sum collected with a warm “thank you” letter for the good they do. They read it with tears in their eyes: love always surprises and their houses were opened to the pastor. Now a group of the Word of Life meets in their new headquarters (photo of lighthouse), and they say: we need the parish, it raises the tenor of our time together.

I often hear these words: this person is “far”; or “he or she is “indifferent”! These words put up a wall. No one is far from the love of God, no one is indifferent to goodness and beauty, attributes of God. I look at people knowing that they are already “touched by his love” (group photo). It’s not just a matter of words, but of mentality.

When people tell me that they do not pray or go to Mass or perhaps that they do not have faith, I immediately point out: you are honest, you love your family, you do volunteer work: you’re living the Gospel! This is the gaze of Jesus forsaken on each one of us: a gaze that penetrates heaven and shows us the infinite love of God; each one is already united to him.

These words (but they are a life that cannot be improvised) are fascinating: people discover that they are already “inside” the love of God. I’ve seen many people begin to search for God, and then conversions and conversions (photo group).

I don’t live this experience alone. Every week I meet with a group of priests (some leave their parishes at six in the morning on their day of rest!): not for pastoral reasons but only to fuse ourselves in unity, to merit the presence of Jesus in our midst. Yes, Jesus among us, before all the rites and organized forms (photo of focolare).

To love one another, each one makes a choice: to forget himself, to make room for the other. You know how difficult it is to die to ourselves. The model is Jesus forsaken, the God free from himself, from his suffering, even from the doubt that he is no longer united to God. Jesus forsaken is the God of pure faith, he frees you from the need for security, for consensus and for protection around you (photo crucifix). He always gives you the strength to love. He is the God for today’s person, for today’s priest.