Jesuit Novitiate
Novitiate of the Euro-Mediterranean Province of the Society of Jesus
iten
facebookTwitterGoogle+

Capodanno è Pink Floyd

Info

New Year’s Eve and Pink Floyd

04 Jan 2020

4 February 1974 In the new Pink Floyd album “The Dark side of the Moon”, the singer David Gilmour in the song Time sings provocatively “every year is getting shorter”, leaving behind them a melancholy atmosphere, in front of the inevitable pace of the days lived in an empty way.

31 December 2019 It is around 19.30 when together with another novice I am going to ring the Crocicchio bell, a homeless hospitalization of the opera S. Marcellino of the Company of Jesus, to celebrate my New Year in “an offhand way”.

As usual, the operator opens the door to us smiling and, after greeting us, assigns us the room where we would have spent the night.

After settling in quickly, we went down to the refectory where a large table was set up to spend our New Year’s Eve dinner with all the guests. Our neighbors were those people who silently accompany us every day in our walking in the cities where we live, without we really realize it.

Sitting around that table, the days of mid-November seem far away when, in front of the fateful question “What are you doing for New Year’s Eve?”, that feeling of anxiety arose spontaneously inside me to have to try to give an adequate answer to such a general expectation . As if it were fundamental not to have to “throw away” not even an opportunity of one’s youth to fully enjoy one’s life.

Yet, this coping with the repetition of this question, with the hope of finding the right answer to not waste the umpteenth opportunity proposed, has never prevented the sun from “continuing to sink and then coming up behind you, while you run to catch it up”.

In the simplicity of our lives, I realize how truly “every year it is getting shorter”, indeed, also that “the sun is the same in a relativel way but I am older, shorter of breath and one day closer to death”. Yet I really don’t feel like saying today to “fritter and waste time”.

Of course, as novices, we employ it in an unconventional way. But we do not squander it.

Christmas, which we celebrated a few days ago, in fact, reminds us that we have already found “Someone or something to shows you the way”, or perhaps better, has already found us and the way to fill our days with meaning.

Faced with this awareness, albeit partial, not immediate and painless, the moments of anxiety disappear when it seems mandatory to have to go back to optimizing one’s time. The time that before seemed to me that I do not have and that I employed to save my plans and prevent them from leading to nothing.

It is true that “no one tells you when to run”, but the starting shot is not somewhere outside of us, but within our history.

 

Time is gone, the article is over.

Happy new research year.Happy 2020!

Giovanni Barbone, novice of the second year

“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!

Close notification

GesuitiNetwork - Cookie Policy

This website uses cookies to improve our services and your user experience. By continuing your navigation without changing your browser settings, you agree to receive cookies from our website. For more information visit this page.