By A. Tortorella

On 18 September 2013, at Capriate San Gervasio in the Province of Bergamo, in the ‘O. Cerruti’ health-care centre run by Camillian religious, four young men professed for the first time the vows of service to the sick, poverty, chastity and obedience and thus put on themselves the habit with the red cross which St. Camillus wanted for himself and his followers. This celebration, presided over by the Provincial Superior of the Province of Sicily and Naples, took place in the chapel of this health-care centre and witnessed the participation  of a large number of brothers, amongst whom the consultor for formation Fr. Hubert Goudjinou and the Provincial of the Province of North Italy, Father Vittorio Paleari, as well as friends and relatives, many of them from far away, who had come to offer their support with affection and prayer to the four neo-professed. The Holy Mass was an intense  moment: the attention to the liturgy, the singing, the rite itself of the religious profession, and the palpable emotion of the four young men all touched the hearts of those people who were present, provoking in everyone a feeling of gratitude for the gift of these vocations.
The four young men in question – Antonio Grassi, Salvatore Giuffrida, Nicola Docimo and Salvatore Giuseppe Pontillo – who are for the most part from the South of Italy, prepared for this moment with an intense year of discernment and formation – their year of novitiate, guided this year by their teacher, Father Giuseppe Facchin. The Camillian novitiate is characterised in particular by daily encounter with sick people as well as the study of the history of the Order and its specific spirituality. Thus these novices were able to mature their feeling of being consecrated entirely to God and to the suffering, in the Church of Christ, and as members of the spiritual Family of Camillus de Lellis.
8 September has always been an important day for Camillian religious. In 1584, indeed, Camillus ‘clothed’ with the religious habit his first companions on this very day, entrusting them to the protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary, celebrated on her nativity: in a certain sense Camillus consecrated the birth of his new religious community to the birth of Mary.
The neo-professed, Antonio, Salvo, Nicola and Salvatore, thus begun anew a stage of their lives. The journey of the religious life, indeed, is a special journey which never sees the ‘end of a cycle’ but always begins a new one: it is a fine journey because it is characterised by an awareness that one should never see oneself as ‘having arrived’ but as always being on a pathway, encountering, in a crescendo, people and situations where it is possible to see the work of God.
To these new brothers of ours goes the affection of everyone and their glorious invocation in our prayers!+