This weekend, the Lenten season finds us engaged in two different contexts than the more usual parish communities and oratories we've encountered in recent months.
The first context is that of the Casa del Giovane, to which we were introduced by Father Arturo Cristani. One Friday evening, he came to the seminary to lead a moment of biblical meditation and to share dinner with us, recounting his experience at the Casa del Giovane. A few days later, he also took us to visit the exhibition on Father Enzo Boschetti, set up in the former oratory on Viale della Libertà, where he lived and where he began his work, welcoming young people to sleep in the same rooms as the oratory. After this introduction to the Casa del Giovane, each of us was placed in one of its component communities for a service experience during the Saturdays of Lent, sharing in the daily rhythms and style of community life.
The second reality we're beginning to understand is that of the prison. Together with Father Dario Crotti, the chaplain, and the inmates, we attend Sunday Mass and then visit the ward for inmates with psychiatric problems to bring them communion. Here too, simply by experiencing the routine of the chaplaincy's activities, we're continually amazed at how Christian witness often comes through small gestures of thoughtfulness and care, like exchanging a word or a smile with an inmate, or even just helping Father Dario pick spinach in the garden (which is also a garden, a splendid "workshop" of life tended by Father Dario himself with some of the inmates), or even joking with the prison guards while we sip coffee at the bar.
In short, we really seem to glimpse those shoots of hope, which we have chosen as this year's theme, sprouting even where we would be more inclined to see nothing but barren, stony ground.
And isn't this also the Easter of Resurrection for which we are preparing?
In the photo: one of the Sunday lunches at Casa del Giovane (Mother House) with a scout group from Genoa.
