It has already been more than two months since I entered the novitiate, and one thing that comes up from time to time in living my weeks here, is the melancholy of my past life, of having left my family, my friends, some of my passions. I have often found myself wondering whether this melancholy was a sign that prompted me to reflect on my choice. I thought it was essential to dwell on this aspect and I want to tell you what I discovered.
I believe that being melancholy about life and affections is absolutely a good sign, and indicates that my heart is responding to the way I have taken. We are not machines that can turn on and off the feelings we have. Discovering that I have experienced so far is missing for me, who has often had difficulty expressing my feelings, is a sign that my heart is capable of love. However I am reminded the Gospel verse where Jesus invites us to leave everything to follow him: “One thing you lack: Go your way, sell whatever you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, take up the cross, and follow Me.” (Mk 17:21). The young man went away sad and at that moment did not follow him. Does leaving everything behind mean forgetting loved ones? I don’t think so! On the contrary, I think that these feelings lead to my loving the people who are now far away even more intensely than before. It’s true that I can’t be with them as I would like, I can’t hug them in the moments of despair that life inevitably reserves for us, I can’t be with them when they need me or in moments of celebration and joy, but my love for them grows every day and the feeling of melancholy helps me to love them even more. Relationships are not torn apart but sublimated by a true love that comes alive in prayer and in thinking of them constantly. I often feel the sentiments expressed in Matthew’s Gospel (19:29): ‘And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands, for My name’s sake, shall receive a hundredfold, and inherit eternal life’. Well, I feel at this moment that I have received a hundred times what I have left, and I hope that my loved ones can also feel this.
Alessandro Di Mauro