‘Not to me Lord, not to me, but to your name be all honour and glory as well as to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the Burning Heart of Charity of St. Camillus’

Dearest Confreres,

After repeated requests, with a great deal of difficulty I will now narrate a part of the wonderful experience through which for three years, with the approval of my beloved Superiors, I have been constantly living service to our brothers and sisters most in need of mercy.

I believe that I have listened carefully to the Will of God who in a series of ordinary and extraordinary facts has pointed out to me (and the facts would indicate the truth of this) the road to take to achieve a more industrious charity of a Camillian character.

The powerful help of the Immaculate Heart of the Mother, and the example of the great heart of St. Camillus, meant that to me, a poor and miserable man lacking in innumerable qualities, was entrusted a special large dish of charity for the glory of God and the Mother, and in honour of St. Camillus and the work of the Camillians, at the spiritual and corporal service of so many marginalised or self-marginalised brothers and sisters often only known by the road sweepers of the great city of Milan.

How many times has it befallen me to discover striking and even very upsetting situations of sick people (men and women) who had the characteristics of the plague-stricken of the epoch of St. Camillus, abandoned to themselves as they awaited death, rotting while they were still alive!

How many waves of true joy have I experienced every time I have been able to raise them up from so much humiliating and stinking garbage, silent in their exaggerated loneliness and suffering which seemed endless!

   But whence and why so much strength and courage? At times I ask myself this when continuing on this journey which seems to me made for people full of health and endless talents, whereas I (and this has been the case for thirty years) seem more to drag myself along rather than to walk.

   If faith can still be given pride of place, then I can give an answer to myself and others about how one can journey along difficult and burdensome ways, increasingly discovering how that journey is preceded by an invisible force that is nonetheless always present with its wonderful providence to ensure that this extraordinary journey is still continuing with its programme proclaimed by Jesus for the final judgement. ‘I was hungry and thirsty and you gave…naked and you clothed me…sick and abandoned and you helped me and loved me, etc…’

To tell the truth, there have indeed been moments when I seemed to be in a river in a storm, a river that was then in flood and at times burst its banks and carried away men and things.

But after every storm (and this rather than diminishing my faith in the force of invisible, but always present, God, actually increased it), I found that I was not discouraged and defeated by the violence of the evil but, rather, I was like a person who after a battle had acquired a greater capacity to fight for his own good and the good of his brothers and sisters.

The words of Jesus ‘Whatever you did to one of the least of these my brethren you did to me’ are like a provocation that constantly promotes an impetus of generosity for which Jesus offers himself as an example.

‘Love one another as I have loved you’. What a goal! One may say that it cannot be reached. Yet, whatever the case, he commands us to imitate him.

Dear confreres, I do not want to preach. I was asked to describe my experience and with difficulty, as I said at the outset, I have provided an answer.

Now after a brief description of my wonderful Camillian experience, I will give some details about my more than three years of journeying in this (I hope) holy service.

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