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Letter for leaving

21 Sep 2018

Yep, leaving.

You leave every time you conclude a journey to start another one.

Come to think of it, it’s been ever since we were conceived that we’re leaving. Many stages. None conclusive.

Sometimes it’s good to turn around and look at them. Above all to understand what we want to keep in our backpack of travelers / pilgrims.

It must be light. It must still have room inside to welcome new things.

And so καταρτίζομεν: we prepare our ship, mend our nets … Yes, navigating the seas and walking are naturally similar…

What to take with you from our Greek lessons?

I cannot know what each of you will keep. However I know what it is that I will keep. I, who might seem not to leave … and instead every time I start with a new group, I too “leave”.

In my backpack there is the beauty of communicating: by now I know that it is only by listening to the word together that flashes of deeper understanding are born.

There is love for the word that I always want to hear.

There is memory: “leaving is in part dying” is sometimes said; it’s true, because we are separated; but to remember – “ricordare” in Italian – is to return to the heart (cor, cordis in Latin is the heart); and we always carry the heart with us.

You ask me what I wish you.

Well, it’s all here already …

In a side pocket of your backpack I put all the affection and esteem that I have for you.

– Umba

 

(A letter written by Umberta Parodi – who teaches Greek at the Novitiate – to Andrei, Cornel, Giacomo, Janez and Piero)

“Blessed is he who finds his strength in you and decides on the holy journey in his heart” (Ps 83:6)

by Daniele Angiuli

Every pilgrim who leaves his home, his affections, to embark on a journey, brings with him contrasting emotions: on the one hand the joy of setting out, of encountering places of unprecedented beauty and new gazes to meet; on the other hand, homesickness for what he leaves behind, for the people he is separating from, knowing, however, that love goes far beyond geographical distances. Above all, he is animated by the desire to be ‘enriched’ along the way, not so much by souvenirs as by encounters capable of transforming him, of ‘letting himself be made’ by the journey rather than ‘making’ the journey.

I believe that similar sentiments animated the men and women of whom the Gospel tells us who, leaving occupations, relationships, set out to follow the Rabbi of Nazareth, who taught from an ‘itinerant chair’ and fascinated many with the strength of his gaze and gestures… Among the many names there is Peter, called from the Sea of Galilee to the sea of humanity; Matthew, invited to turn his gaze towards a Love without measure; Mary of Magdala, liberated by Love and called to be an Apostle of the Resurrection.

But among these names are also ours, today: Jacopo, Paolo, Andras, Gabor, Soheil, Paolo, Daniele, young people with dreams in their hearts, characterised by fragility and strengths. From 1 October, we started a journey in the novitiate community in Genoa, to enter into a more intimate relationship with the Lord, to get to know ourselves better and the lifestyle that makes us happy and makes others happy.

Each of us left a part of ourselves, attracted by a Sight and moved by the desire for a full life, in order to be ‘men all the way, or rather all the way to the top’, as Don Tonino Bello used to say. We certainly have some fears about the future that awaits us, but we trust in the One who becomes our travelling Companion who, like with the disciples of Emmaus, listens to our worries, welcomes our defeats, and rekindles hope.

A month ago, on 16 October 2023, we entered our second probation, a favourable time to go deep into the Word of God, into the writings of our Founding Father St. Ignatius, through prayer life, study, fraternal life.

The possibility of having a day punctuated by precise times, places in which we can contemplate the beauty of creation, adult people in the faith to talk with, companions on whom we can rely, is indeed a great gift from God that we hope to cherish and make bear fruit.

But your name too, dear reader, is called with love by the Master: he does not ask us to be perfect in order to leave, but the desire to dare and the will to entrust ourselves to Him, just as we allow ourselves to be moulded by Him. For us and for you, “homo viator”, the wish dear to the Scout world: “Good path!

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