LOVING JESUS MEANS BEING A MISSIONARY

Father Piero Gheddo

«Who is Jesus Christ for you?» An easy and simple question, but at the same time difficult and complex. Since my birth, God granted me the special gift of having an authentic Christian formation as I was born into a family with profound faith, living an evangelical life. My grandmother Anna, who educated me - my mother died when I was five and my father passed away during the Second World War - always said: «Stay with the Lord, and the Lord will stay with you». For me and my two brothers this become the slogan of our lives. Whenever there was a problem, difficulty or discussion, she would call the three of us to her, we would pray and then grandmother would say, «What would Jesus do in this situation? What would Mother Mary say?» She would often quote from the Bible, she would tell us episodes of the lives of Jesus and Mary (and about the others in the Bible), making us fall in love with them. She was a woman who was semi-illiterate (she hadn't gotten very far in elementary school), but she had had and had educated 11 children, then us, the three grandchildren, and she did it all with the intelligence of faith and heart. I then became a missionary priest, I had many priests educate and guide me, I also graduated in missionary theology, but if I have to think about my life and what influenced by Christian formation the most, then I have no doubts: it was the education given to me during my childhood and adolescence by my grandmother Anna.

My parents, Rosetta and Giovanni, that even today are regarded as saints in my hometown, married in 1928 and prayed that at least one of their children would devote their lives to Jesus Christ and the Church. God chose me, and for this I am still grateful to my mother and father, because my life is full of joy, notwithstanding the trials, temptations, sufferings, and intense work--the common thread that unites all men.

From the time following my ordination (in 1953), when I learned from my parish priest and my relatives of my parents insistent prayer, I felt, not without any merit of mine, chosen, and I started thinking that my life could not be but a walk of thanks and recognition of God, who was so good to me that He chose me amongst thousands of others.

Immediately following the war, when Italy was destroyed and divided by hate, even in my little town of Tronzano (Vercelli), there was poverty, violence and revenge. In the meetings of Azione Cattolica(an Italian Catholic organization), we prayed and we discussed: we asked ourselves what we could do to help our country re-emerge. Some said we had to commit ourselves to work, others in politics, studies, founding Christian families... I followed the discussions with attention and humility, but in my heart I thought, «I am so happy, Lord, that You have chosen me to be a missionary priest! My dear brothers and friends here question themselves, but I already have an answer - a beautiful one, a strong and sure one - which gives me so much joy: I will be a priest and a missionary. What is there that is more beautiful and indispensable to win over this hate, the violence and destruction, than to consecrate my life to Jesus and bring Him to men?»

"Who is Jesus Christ for you?" It is all my love, my joy, the ultimate end towards which I aim all my actions, my affections and my thoughts. I don't always succeed, but to Him I consecrated my small life and in these years that God allows me life I would like to become as close as I can to the Divine model that the Lord Jesus shows me in the Gospels.

Everyday I ask the Lord to renew in my that wonderful joyous feeling of celebrating my first mass, to concede me the gift of tears so that I remember that I, poor sinner, call on the altar my God and I distribute Him in food to a starving humanity. When I was a seminarian, grandmother Anna, shortly before dying, said to me: «When you become a priest, I will no longer be there, but remember, on that day you will be more important than Trueman and Stalin, or De Gasperi and Togliatti, because you will call the Lord and He will come into your hands». Often I ask myself whether announcing the word of Christ, in life and words, is still a message of joy, of that joy that the angel announced to the pastors on the "Holy night":

«I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all he people; for to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord» (Luke 2, 10-11).

But the question "who is the Jesus Christ for you?" cannot simply be closed within the confines of myself. It calls me to look outward, to my sisters and brothers in the whole world. The love for Christ brings me to commit myself to make Him known and loved by all: I cannot know Him and love Him by keeping Him to myself. I became a missionary of PIME (Pontifical Institute of Foreign Missions) because I thought the "missio ad gentes" is the most advanced form, the extreme frontier of faith and the Church, to which all the baptized are called and must convert.

The gift of faith, freely received from God, must be communicated to others if we want to keep it strong and alive. «Faith is strengthened by giving it!» says the Pope in Redemptoris Missio (n.2). The whole Church must convert to the universal mission: «no believer in Christ, no Church institution can evade this supreme duty: announcing Christ to all the world» (Redemptoris Missio n.3).

Our faith is often perceived as something personal to protect, not to communicate. I always felt that the passage of the Catechism of Pio X is incomplete: «Why did God create me? - To know Him, to Love Him and serve Him in this life and enjoy in the next, in Paradise...» The mission is missing!

A few months ago, I had a discussion in Arezzo called «Jesus, stumbling block». The mission becomes increasingly difficult because Jesus Christ creates problems, embarrasses, scandalizes: «A stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles», said Saint Paul (Cor. 1 1,23). The crisis of the Christian world is a crisis of faith and mission, not of religious spirit: in Milan there are 5,000 magicians, fortune tellers, oriental sects, spiritual centers, card readers, horoscope tellers. In Italy, there are 150,000 (the statistic was given at the Italian Congress of Magicians and Fortune Tellers in June of 1996!). As soon as rumors get around that there is an apparition or "miracle" the crowds run en masse. Everyone feels the need for the transcendence of the Absolute.

Religiousness is not in crisis, but faith in Christ is, the sole Savior of man, of humanity. We live in a society not of atheists but of idolizers. God made into man in Christ has been substituted by idols: money, sex, career, power, glory, superstitions, "do-it-yourself religion".

The sociologist Franco Garelli concluded one of his studies saying that today in Italy «religion is strong, but faith vacillates» ("Strength of religion and weakness of faith" Il Mulino, 1996). Ninety-five percent of Italians are baptized in the Catholic Church, but only «30% go to Church every Sunday» and 33% of these are «practicing» in that they recite every Sunday the Credo, where they proclaim to wait «for the world that will come» and then declare that «we cannot know what awaits us after death».

For two years, every Saturday evening, I would speak on Italian television Rai One (December 1992-December 1994), explaining the Sunday Gospel (see the two volumes "Eight minutes of Gospel on TV" and "Jesus on Rai One" Piemme). A well-known journalist friend wrote to me: «You often speak of salvation in Christ, but don't you realize that there is an abyss between the admiration for Jesus, great prophet and believer that He is God. His message of love and justice is the only thing that can save humanity from egoism, hate and war. But there is no need to believe that Jesus is God and obeying the Church to love your neighbor. So that, if Jesus tells me to heal the poor, forgive offenses an educate children with honesty and love, I'm fine with that, I try to do that to. But if the Church, by its name forces upon me many other precepts and prohibitions, the great majority of Italians - including those baptized - will no longer follow it. Therefore, listen to me, speak of love as the basis of inspiration of our lives and you will have great consent, but forget about Jesus is God and the Church speaks in His name: they are arguable concepts that create divisions and sentiments of extremism in those who believe».

In our time the Christian identity is very weak. We have traversed a long season in which Christianity seemed to be reduced to morals. The "evangelical values" are appreciated by all (peace, justice, solidarity, love) but the faith in Christ, the conversion and the imitation of Christ does not make sense. The message wants to be taken away from the messenger: peace, justice, love, yes, but the belief that only Christ can save man is considered "extremism."

Salvation has become secularized. Christianity is often reduced to a kind of "religion of humanity" (as the enlightened of the 1700's wanted), the Church seen as a philanthropic society and a reference to morality. Today the Church as an institution is not in crisis. There is no danger that the Church will disappear: not only for the promise of Jesus but because in our world of secularization, it is no longer torn: instead it is exalted as an instrument of social peace, as a renewal of ethics, as assistance to the poor, to the marginalized, to drug-addicts, to the people of the "third world."

The Church is seen as the pillar of the advanced capitalistic society, but not because Jesus, sole Savior of man preaches, but because it offers a remedy, with all its priests, sisters, volunteers, charity institutions, to the disasters of the "structures of sin" in which we are all immersed. Therefore, there is the temptation to reduce Christianity to a moral and consoling system for man alienated by capitalism and materialism, passing from the messenger to the message: from Jesus, Son of God, sole Savior of man, to "moral values" that are common to everyone. People hunger and thirst for God and we give them the "talk about values," that in a discussion of faith makes sense only if centered on the figure of Christ.

In China, visiting the seminary of the diocese of Sheqi, I met about 20 young boys and men that study the priesthood without books, without a library, almost without teachers. Only two priests direct the seminary: the Bishop and the priest of the cathedral and the factotum of the diocese. I asked the Bishop, who had been in prison for more than 20 years, how it's possible to give them an adequate formation of the sacred sciences and he responded: «Here we form men impassioned by Christ and probably martyrs for faith».

"Who is Jesus Christ for you?" Here is a great question to ask to all those who proclaim themselves Christians. Faith is not just an intellectual fact apart from daily existence, but its a love and passion for Christ that transforms life. The Pope says it clearly: the mission is a communication of experience, so that «the true missionary is the saint» (Redemptoris Missio, n.90). He who truly lives the Gospel is worth more for the mission and the new evangelization, than all the pastoral plans, and the documents and committees, because «the Saint is the Gospel lived out every day» as Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini said.

Closely studying the letter of the two servants of God, Marcello Candia and Clemente Vismara, for whose cause of canonization is underway (I am the Postulator), I have become convinced of this: the mediocrity of our lives, that sometimes makes us unhappy and sad, discouraged and pessimistic, does not come from difficult external conditions, from lack of culture or health or success; it comes from our lack of communion with God, from the fact that our faith is weak and limited to an intellectual level: it does not warm us, it does not give us strength or joy in adversity. Candia and Vismara, while having difficult lives with much suffering, incomprehension, and difficult sicknesses, were always full of joy because they well knew and profoundly loved the Lord.

We must be in love with Jesus! Saint Paul said he was «Christ Jesus has made me his own» (Philippians, 3, 12): «Mihi vivere Christus est» for me living is Christ. And he added: «But whatever gain I had counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For this sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ». (Philippians, 2, 7-8). In the letters of Saint Paul, the exegeticists counted 164 times the expression "in Christ," that is the life in Christ. «Who is the missionary?» they once asked Mother Teresa, who answered: «It is that Christian so in love with Jesus Christ, that desires nothing more than to make him known and loved».