St. Guido Conforti: A Heart that Encompassed All the World and Every Culture
“Saint Guido Maria Conforti: a tireless weaver of family relationships among non-Christians. An open, fraternal, tender and solidary heart with every human being in times of distress, tears and death of the Covid 19 Pandemic.”
Fr. Luigi Marchioron, SX is a Xaverian Missionary and head of our theology community in the Philippines.
Never as now – in which the tragic and painful epidemic of the Covid 19 virus has touched the whole of humanity without distinctions, separations or walls – we experience that we are truly one family, that we are all intimately connected to each other and that we find ourselves together “in the same house”.[2] We all feel the same call: to face and overcome this situation together because we experience and share the same pain, the same tears, the same hope, the same dignity and image: we are all children of the Common Father,[3] we are His precious humanity, humanity embraced and loved for all eternity: “In Him we live and move and have our being”.[4]
Pain and despair that tear us apart, fear and death, loneliness and tears, solitude and sense of abandonment and isolation, the sense of responsibility and the courage to protect the weak, the spirit of sacrifice and solidarity of those who lead us to “living water”,[5] the prayer as a strong way in which the unity of the human family is truly rebuilt, the hands offered to take care of others, to give time to the other and at the same to know that we are in His hands, the power of good and hope, the attitude of dedication that comes from an act of self-offering, an act that creates communion, and the possibility to die for the other. All this knows no distinction between believers and non-believers.
In his life, Saint Guido Maria Conforti – with his missionaries and with his “distant brothers”[6] – has revealed himself as a tireless weaver of family relationships. His ability to build a home with every person, men and women, as children of the “Common Father” is a gift for the entire humanity and for the mission that comes from a compassionate, tender, fragile, patient, merciful, solidary and universal gaze of the Crucified: “I looked at Him and He looked at me and seemed to say so many things”.[7]
To rediscover, in these dramatic times of Covid 19, the invitation of St. Guido Maria Conforti to form a single family that embraces humanity in the risen Lord, speaks of the need of being part of a single reality of filial and fraternal relationships stronger than ever and that only together we can find ways out.
On the 4th Sunday of Lent, in the relentless and painful development of the pandemic, the Gospel presented itself to us – locked up, frightened and lost – as an explosion of light and courage: “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”[8] Jesus’ response asks us to “open” our eyes to a new dimension of life: “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be made manifest in him.”[9] The risen Lord heals our blindness of heart, our “in-humanity”, by opening our life to the ways of salvation (“the works of God”) that is “universal brotherhood”,[10] a “single family” that embraces the humanity of every person, solidarity; small and tender gestures of love for each other that protect, bless and save; consolation, listening, compassion, bearing one another’s burdens;[11] sharing together the pain of mourning; to “see” what is essential in life; the struggle against human indifference that makes us blind and deaf; the collaboration between brothers; the time where everyone has to learn openness, docility and solidarity through what he suffers;[12] the eternal and total “Yes” of God to each person in the mystery of the Incarnation and because of His “Yes” to every person, many “Yes”, lived and fulfilled in every corner of the earth, pronounced with fragility, imperfection, but with tenderness, compassion, humility and self-offering to others.
For a Xaverian Missionary, to receive the Testament of our Founder (“…the fulfillment of the wish of the Risen Lord: the desire to form a single family that embraces humanity…) means to open our humanity to the “common Father” and, with humility and all our fragilities, to open ourselves to the humanity of the other person. We are called to overcome “our” borders (emotional, psychological, moral, religious, cultural…) to be open to solidarity. In this journey, a missionary, as a man of the Gospel, as a man of a “single family”, inevitably clashes with his internal resistances and the external opposition. But, as far as he resists in this daily fight, he becomes a witness, a martyr. A witness of a new humanity, a new family, more human, abundant and fraternal; he becomes a witness of the gift of faith as the source of his self-offering. His strength consists in his conviction that the Gospel is the “offer” of a life fully human. By receiving the Gospel, he does not mortify his/her life, but he/she expands his being, his potentialities, his perspectives according to the dimension of the “common Father”.
For the Xaverian Missionaries, consecrated to those who do not know the unconditional and compassionate embrace of love of the risen Lord, and sent beyond the boundaries of their own cultural milieu and local Church, the mission experience is a time of grace, a time of fruitful discovery of the religious diversity of the children of God. We feel constantly touched by the intellectual capacity of many people, by their high morality, by their spiritual excellence, and by their virtues. I believe that the perspective and modality the Founder, intended and expressed as the “testament of the father”[13] – the formation of a single Christian family, which embraces humanity [14]- is a real and always possible bridge between peoples and civilizations. The Founder’s conviction to make the world a single family in His Son and with the modalities of His Son is for the Xaverian Missionaries the heart of sharing the beauty and truth of the Good News of the Risen Lord (proclamation and testimony) meant as attention of love to peoples, cultures and religions. Today more than ever, in fact, humanity reveals an essential interconnection felt and experienced as “one single family”.
The vision of Saint Guido Maria Conforti in his Testament Letter n.1, removes fears, sustains and encourages creative paths of rich, fraternal and solidary collaboration with Ad Gentes,[15] Ad Extra[16] and Ad Vitam.[17] In his Testament Letter we find very specific objectives, ideals, methods and criteria of behavior towards every people, every non-Christian: “to see God, seek God, love God in all things, intensifying our desire to spread His kingdom everywhere…” ;[18] “In omnibus Christus”,[19] and “Caritas Christi urget nos.”[20]
In the heart of the Founder there is a “powerful reminder”[21] to show the merciful embrace of the “common Father” for the world and for every single human person. Saint Guido Maria Conforti knows how to look beyond his cultural, social and ecclesial horizons and borders. On the one hand, he affirms that the Word “entered” the world through the mystery of the Incarnation, It became flesh and dwelt among us,[22] therefore fully aware of its universal mission – and on the other, he testifies his humble and fragile but total self-offering to go out, to go to the “borders” of humanity to be with brothers and sisters who do not know the love of the Risen Lord.
The divine and inestimable value of “universal brotherhood”[23] is deeply rooted in the heart of the Founder of the Xaverian Missionaries; it is a “powerful call”[24] in his thoughts and actions.
Saint Guido Maria Conforti sees humanity as a “single family” and the “Gospel of Christ” that is, the Good News, as the force that changes the world, and that a new humanity, more fraternal and compassionate is possible because we have a “common Father”, as he wrote in his Pastoral Letter for the Lenten season in 1924:
“We all meet in the same house, which is the house of the common Father … freedom, equality, fraternity, are no longer vain words for that people, but a consoling reality, because everyone, more intimately, feels that he is a child of the same heavenly Father and part of the same legacy. Everyone feels as pervaded by a spirit of love and peace, which makes social coexistence happier and more peaceful.”[25]
At the end of his Testament, the Founder manifests all his hope that “we will one day meet together in heaven and share the same heavenly homeland…after having been members of the same family on earth”.[26] Our brothers Piero Zoni, Stefano Coronese, Gerardo Caglioni, Luigi Masseroni, Giuseppe Scintu, Guglielmo Saderi, Giuseppe Rizzi, Piermario Tassi, Vittorio Ferrari, Enrico Di Nicolò, Corrado Stradiotto, Pilade Giuseppe Rossini, Nicola Masi, Piergiorgio Bettati, Angelo Costalonga, Lucio Gregato e Francesco Cesare Grasso, as sons of Saint Guido Maria Conforti, with their weaknesses but always with an open, fraternal, tender and solidary heart wanted to be tireless weavers of family relationships in the heart of other peoples and cultures. With them, today, we receive the same blessing of our father, Saint Guido Maria Conforti.
[1] Testament Letter n.1. The Testament Letter is a clear and passionate project of Life for the Xaverians left by the Founder Saint Guido Maria Conforti to his beloved Institute. In his Testament, Conforti presents the fundamental dimensions of his Project and the spirit of the Constitutions, and therefore of the Congregation itself and the vocation of the Xaverians. The Xaverian are celebrating the 100th anniversary of this precious Letter (Parma, Mother House, 2 July 1921).
[2] Ermanno Ferro a cura di, PAGINE CONFORTIANE, 1926, 5 febbraio, Parma, Lettera quaresimale “Santificazione della festa”; FCT 28, 229.
[3] 1924, 25 dicembre, Parma – Cattedrale, Omelia “Il Giubileo”; FCT 27, 174-175.
[4] Acts 17:28
[5] Joh. 4:10.
[6] That is “Non-Christians”. 1924, 25 dicembre, Parma – Cattedrale, Omelia “Il Giubileo”; FCT 27, 172-173). The Founder uses also the expression “distant peoples”: 1924, 16 novembre – Parma, Basilica Cattedrale. Partono Pasquale De Martino, Lorenzo Fontana, Angelo Lampis, Vittorino Callisto Vanzin. Da FCT 0 pp. 102 – 106.
[7] Antologia degli Scritti di Guido Maria Conforti, Alfiero Ceresoli – Ermanno Ferro a cura di, pag. 169.
[8] Jn. 9:2.
[9] Jn. 9:3.
[10] 1924, 25 dicembre, Parma – Cattedrale, Omelia “Il Giubileo”; FCT 27, 174-175.
[11] Gal. 6:2.
[12] Cf. Hebrews 5:8 (“Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered”).
[13] LT n.10.
[14] Letter Testament n.1.
[15] That is Non-Christians
[16] That is Beyond the boundaries of our own cultural milieu and local Church.
[17] That is Unconditionally and Forever.
[18] Testament Letter n.10.
[19] That is “Christ is all, and in all” or “Christ in everything” (Col. 3:11). It is the Episcopal motto of Conforti in his Coat of Arms.
[20] That is “The love of Christ urges us” or “The charity of Christ impels us” (2 Cor. 5:14). It is the motto chosen by Conforti for his missionaries.
[21] 1924, 25 Dicembre, Parma – Cattedrale, Omelia “Il Giubileo”; FCT 27, 174-175.
[22] Gv 1:14.
[23] 1924, 25 Dicembre, Parma – Cattedrale, Omelia “Il Giubileo”; FCT 27, 174-175.
[24] Ibid,.
[25] Ermanno Ferro a cura di, PAGINE CONFORTIANE, 1926, 5 febbraio, Parma, Lettera quaresimale “Santificazione della festa”; FCT 28, 229.
[26] LT n.11.
