Silvano Cola
I was struck by the
light
When I was ordained a priest I thought that I
had already reached human and spiritual maturity. Besides my studies in
philosophy and theology, I had a degree in education, I had studied pedagogy at
the
University
of
Turin
, I had a degree in psychology, I was working in
Turin
, in a
Boys
Town
, and teaching social psychology to
social workers….
After
only four years as a priest I started going through an intellectual crisis
because I felt that all the philosophy and theology I had studied was of absolutely
no use in the ministry. I was honestly thinking of leaving the priesthood when
a friend who studied at the polytechnic school of Turin and who didn’t know
anything of what I was going through, said to me one day: “You know, Silvano, I came in contact with a movement…” I blocked him
at once. As a psychologist, I thought of movements as leaders with followers who were like sheep, the opposite of
self-fulfilment. His insistence went on for at least two months, but I wouldn’t
let him get so far as to even tell me the name of the Movement.
One
day he confronted me: “Listen, Silvano, you are a
Catholic priest and I am a Catholic; I came in contact with this movement and I
don’t know if it is Protestant or Catholic: you must get to know it at least so
that you can tell me if I can belong to it!” I didn’t realize that it was a
trap. With great arrogance, I replied: “Well, if it’s for that reason….” An
hour later we found ourselves in an apartment where there was only one young
lady who welcomed us, greeted us, and we sat down. No one was speaking.
With
a smile, she said: “If you don’t speak, I
will have to say something. What shall I tell you… perhaps how we spend our
day…. As soon as we wake up in the morning we choose
God again as the only all of our life….”
That
was the first blow for me: I felt my stomach twitching (in twelve years of
seminary life I hadn’t heard a sentence like that). Then – she continued: “We prepare breakfast for Jesus in the others, we go to the office to love Jesus in the supervisor,
to love Jesus in our colleagues….”
I
don’t think I have ever suffered as much as I did in that half hour. My one
insistent thought was: “She must be immaculate!” I was really upset. When we
left I said to my friend: “I can’t tell you if they
are Protestants or Catholics; I only know that something important happened.”
I
left quickly (I had a motorbike). I wasn’t able to sleep for a number of nights.
I was like a robot at work too; I kept asking myself: “Who are these people?” I
thought: if I continue on like this, I’ll go mad. I must understand who they
are.” I went back to that apartment, this time alone. Another young lady opened
the door. I greeted her and asked if that other young lady was home. She
answered that she was alone. A little hesitant, I said: “Please, when she comes
home, would you tell her that Father Silvano passed
by to see her.” Then she replied: “Oh, you are Father Silvano,
please, come in!” I had never seen her before in my life, and she already knew
me. I was quiet. She spoke to me about their spiritual experience.
When
I left, going down the stairs, I sang: Quasi
modo geniti infants, “like newly-born children seek the milk of wisdom.” It was as
if I had been born in that moment. My past life no longer existed and was of no
interest to me, it seemed to have no value. With joy in my heart I thought: Incipit vita nova, as Dante wrote in the
song of paradise. I understood that I had
not understood anything of the Gospel. “They speak but they do not act” –
St. Augustine
had said in Sermon 74, adding: “if they speak and do not act, they are evil
people, and if they are evil, they cannot say good things.” It was like a
photo of myself. I felt dazzled by the new light that
surged forth from the Gospel.
In
the following two months, I went to the focolarine in every free moment I had.
I didn’t speak; in contemplation, I listened to wisdom: the Gospel lived out in
normal everyday living. I had finally seen the novelty of the Gospel.
When
I went for the first time to the house of the focolarini, I met Vittorio Sabbione, a well-known
lawyer in
Turin
. He told me how he lived the Ideal as a lawyer, things I never imaged
ever happened, and so I dared to tell him the little experiences I had lived
during those two months. In this communion, I was deeply impressed by a new
reality never experienced before, which I understood later was what they called
Jesus in the midst. In fact, in
saying good-bye to him, I said: “Vittorio, working
with abandoned and delinquent boys has to some extent made me a delinquent too,
and perhaps I will always be one, but even if I go to hell, I will bring this
experience with me.” It was the destruction and resurrection of the I into the “we” and, at the same time, it was
“heaven.” The world was outside.
Six
months later, at the beginning of July, 1955, I went to Vigo
di Fassa, in the area of
Trent where for the first time I participated in one of those summer meetings
called Mariapolis. A new world, extraordinary. I saw Chiara, I saw the extraordinary simplicity and normality of
the Gospel, harmony. I understood the
meaning of a person who has a charism. She was very busy and so she sent one of
her first companions to speak with me. With her I discovered the secret of God
and of man: to forget oneself in order to truly love the other. I won’t explain
more. It would be enough to understand deeply what Jesus means when he says: “The Father is in me and I am in the Father.”
Love arrives to this point. And this helps us to understand that other
statement: “The Father and I are one.”
Jesus
forsaken is the only true key to being One. This is
the trinitarian model that Christians must seek to live: “Love one another as I
have loved you.”
In
brief, these are the three revelations (I can call them this because for me
they were revelations) that I have deeply placed in my soul: God-Love as the
only all of our life (before the priesthood, before the ministry, before our
family); to see Jesus in everyone because we are all creatures and children of
God, men as Jesus was a man, indeed, the
Man; Jesus crucified and forsaken, that is, the
Man at the apex of his human maturity, free from every conditioning, even in
the moment of the darkness of his separation from the Father, when, out of
love, he entrusted again himself to the Father.
There
was only one drawback: unity, this paradise, was easier to accomplish with the
focolarine and focolarini than with the priests (our priestly Ego was very
strong). It took the prohibition given by the Bishops’ Conference in Italy to
continue having contacts with the Focolare Movement, a prohibition that forced
us to take a step which seemed to be impossible: so as not to lose the Life we
had found, a small group of priests made a pact of unity: “to die rather than
to lose Jesus in our midst.”
And
we are still here, in the splendid family of the Focolare Movement, true family
of God because Jesus is its only true bond.