Towards a greater joy
It was a Sunday in November 1991. I was just born, the first child of Paola and Carlo, my parents: they loved me and educated me, with their constant presence, in the Church, through their daily spirit of self-offering. My brother Andrea joined us in 1995: both reflective spirits, we are united in mutual affection and in the search for what really counts.
I grew up in a serene environment with them and my first friends in Martellago, a town in the province of Venice. During my high school years, I discovered my main passions. Rock music, art museums, walking through cities, the desire for justice, from which developed an interest in socio-political issues which, combined with more existential questions, led me to philosophy.
I decided to study it at university and arrived in Padua at the age of eighteen. A friend took me to the place where I first encountered the Society of Jesus: the Antonianum youth centre. I was struck by some common traits of the Jesuits I met: the ability to listen deeply and the unity of the different aspects of their lives, which – I gradually discovered – derived from the personal relationship with the living God. I began to deepen this relationship with the Lord thanks to the S.E.E.L.., the ‘Spiritual Exercises in Everyday Life’.
The Society of Jesus fascinated me, but another form of Christian life never ceased to attract me: the vocation to married life, the ideal of a married layman committed to the search for truth, in the footsteps of Jacques Maritain, who became my role model. I spent half of my master’s degree abroad, in the cities of Freiburg, Paris and Toulouse. I experienced my limitations and at the same time the constant support of the Lord.
Then, the PhD in Basilicata. Years of personal growth, which culminated in the semester spent in Salamanca, where God showered many gifts on me: above all others, the love for a girl I met in the ‘golden city’. After finishing my PhD, I returned to Salamanca. It was the time to seriously face the question of my vocation. On the one hand, the brief but integral experience of human love that I received had been a source of profound joy. On the other hand, my attraction towards the Society of Jesus had not disappeared; on the contrary, it remained unchanged as time passed by.
Gradually my heart opened up. While listening to the testimonies of Jesuits from so many countries, I discovered with renewed amazement that the stories of people so different from one another spoke intimately to my desires. Everything in my life appeared to be linked with the Society of Jesus, like a golden thread that connected the places and times of the past, made the present rejoice, and invited me to unify the future.
Once I returned to Italy, I worked in a school in Trieste: here a Jesuit accompanied me on the path of discernment, through which I finally decided to enter the Society of Jesus, and I consequently asked for admission. And here I am in Genoa, another city by the sea, beginning at the age of thirty the hidden life in the novitiate: to be born again from above, to discover the joy of service, and to set sail being guided by the gentle breeze of the Holy Spirit!
