At the entrance of the Mass, we have sung “Priestly people”. We are all priests for our Baptism, priests because we can offer our life to God, prophets because we can speak in the name of God, and kings because each one of us has responsibilities to carry on in the Church and the society. The ministerial priesthood, like other specific vocations, is a fulfillment of the Baptism. Each one of us is called to holiness but in different ways.

“The Lord who made me what I am, the Lord who has called me, the Lord who has chosen me, the Lord who made me a King,  I will worship Him, I will love him,  I will made him an everlasting King in my life. In my nothingness, he has called me. I will reciprocate his love for me”. These are my feelings today.

I am happy to be among you to share my joy of being a priest for 25 years. We human beings are used to measuring time and when we reach a certain age we begin to remember. My memory of 25 years ago, January 4, 1997, is this: many people, an immeasurable joy, on the wings of enthusiasm, the awareness that the gift that God was giving me was truly great. My vocation hadn’t been a walk in the park. Before entering the seminary I did many things: at the secondary school I learned to command a ship (actually I never did it in my life), I studied at the university, I was a soldier for four years and lastly, stationmaster of the Italian railways. I had a lot of money in my pocket, I even had a girlfriend. I have also had ups and downs with my faith in God, I have also been away from the Church, abandoning Mass and Confession even if for short periods of time. I was missing something and I didn’t know what. At the age of 25, after a serious journey of faith and discernment, the Lord made me understand what the path to follow could be. And then, after some resistance of mine, during a pilgrimage to Spain (Santiago de Compostela), exactly on August 20, 1989, I decided to respond to God beginning a vocational experience. It was a very difficult moment because my father was not very happy, he called me crazy for quitting my job to enter a seminary. You have to know know that in Italy being a priest is not like here in Nigeria. Priests in Italy are sometimes considered a sort of failed person, people who run away from problems and find comfort in the role of priest. Certainly in Italy what priests say is not listened so much. After some years, however, my father, seeing me happy, began to understand and accepted my vocation, even becoming proud of it and returning to the Church (for me this was a great confirmation of my vocation).

After a few years I became a Somascan professing my religious vows and at 33 I was ordained as a priest. I chose to be a Somascan because in my life I met Somascan religious. Their life intrigued me and they really were witness for me. Then I knew St. Jerome, his life, his spirituality, his mission and felt in love of Somascan life.

Now I’m singing to you, in Italian language and then I will translate it, the song the people of my town sang to me while dancing around the altar at the end of the mass. “You are the most handsome of Adam’s sons. Grace on your lips. You are blessed forever”.

Looking back I thank the Lord because it is he who made me “handsome”, not for my outward appearance, but by calling me.  It is he who called me not because I was perfect but he loved me despite my infidelities and my sins. He prepared the way for my vocation through my family and through the people I met. It is he who made me walk by faith. He gave me the strength to overcome my fears, my shyness (I was afraid to speak in front of people), who gave me so many talents to make fruitful.

This day must not be my glorification but only the goodness of God must stand out. It is he who continues to call people, with their strengths and weaknesses, to follow him and make him known.

And today, after so many years in Italy, after the experience of being provincial, the Lord has called me to be among you. Each of you surely has in your mind a certain idea of the priest, of what a priest is like and of what he should be like. This idea depends on the priests you met and depends also on the culture. I want to be a Somascan priest and as Pope Francis says, a shepherd who smells like sheep.

I do not want to scent of incense because incense is for God and I am not God, but to smell like sheep. The altar is my place when I celebrate the Mass but my place is also among people. Jesus came down to unite himself to humankind, the priest comes down from the altar to distribute the Bread of life and remains among the people to know their problem, to give them a little word or advice, to live and die with them, as St. Jerome said and did. I do not want to be a clerical priest, I am not the master of your souls but I am one like you, who is among you and who helps you to walk on the path of God. I want to be a Somascan priest who take care of children, families and poor people.

Pope Francis recalled a few days ago that the priest must not, first of all, lose closeness to God in prayer and in listening to His Word. And then the priest must be close to the people of God, not professional in sacred things or dispensers of sacraments but attentive, merciful, a man of courage, capable of stopping in front of the wounded people to help them, a man capable of denouncing the injustice and corruption, a man who is willing to give up his life, a man with the style of Jesus.

In 25 years I have tried to follow Jesus and Jerome Miani. Maybe I haven’t always been up to the challenge but I tried and with God’s help I helped someone. Today, as I remember my anniversary, I thank God for what he has given me over the years, for the crises he has helped me to overcome, for the beautiful message that he has entrusted to me to take it to the ends of the earth. And now in Nigeria it is a new opportunity to serve God and the people of God. I thank the fathers and the brothers of my community for their affection and you for yor kind welcome. I am really appreciating. We are brothers and sister in Christ.  As you can see I am not fluent in the language yet, I have to use the paper so as not to lose the thread of my homily. I am sure that you will love me and that you will have patience with me.

But, after having talked about priesthood and thanked God for my vocation, we must talk about today’ Gospel, one of the most difficult text of the New Testament. Yesterday I sent this Gospel translated in my dialect to a friend of mine. His answer was: “Dear Fortunato, these are holy words but for us humans difficult to understand and to put into action, as you can certainly understand. You have to be holy to do what next Sunday’s Gospel says and unfortunately we are not”. We are not holy! It is true! But when Jesus pronounced this words to whom did he address?

It is a reality: we have a lot a difficulties in forgiving, we usually don’t forget wrongs suffered. Sometimes, if we have the opportunity, we are capable of getting our revenge. In the first reading David has the opportunity to do away with king Saul, his worst enemy, one who was ready to kill him. But David, who some years after, when he will be king, will be capable of terrible actions to achieve his goals, now does a greatest deed: he spares his enemy because he is the anointed of God.

This is the first message: if we recognized in every man and woman, even if they are our enemies, the sign of God in him/in her maybe we would be capable of forgiven and love.

“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you”. But do you have enemies?

A little joke:

At the Mass on Sunday, the priest asked the faithful, at the end of the homily: – How many of you have been able to forgive his enemies? Most of them raised their hands, except for an old lady who was in the second row. Mary, have you not forgiven your enemies? asked the priest. “I have no enemies,” she replied gently. “This is very wonderful and rare!!!” said the priest. “How old are you Mary?” – 108 years. The community that attended the mass stood up and began to applaud the lady for a long time. – “Come on and tell us how to live 108 years and have no enemies” asked the priest. The old woman got up with difficulty, went to the altar, and with trembling hands she took the microphone and, looking at the assembly, all moved she said: – They’re all dead, those bastards!!!

The reality is this: we have enemies. We usually don’t call enemy (the word seems too big) our husband, our wife, our son, our daughter, our confrere of the religious community, but sometimes he/she is really an enemy because offends, hurts, makes you look bad, enslaves. Jesus’s teaching questions our way of life. To love enemies, to do good to them seems to have an absurd logic. It seems there is no justice in Jesus’ teaching. We thinks that is right and just responding to a wrong suffered with a punishment as is right an award for a good action. “Offer the cheek” seems to justify the evildoers and weakens us in human relationships. Also God seems to get out with a weak power, unjust and weak against evil. And where we will end up if each one of us put in practice these teaching?

Ladies and gentleman, if we are Christians, we must trust in Jesus’ words. Jesus wants to break the spiral of evil, the spiral of violence and propose us to be merciful as our Father. This is holiness! Our Father in heaven becomes the model to look at in order to build and renew our relationships. Jesus does not ask his disciples to obey to God but to look like the Father. He is merciful, we are merciful. He forgives, we forgive. And so on….!

Jesus is inviting us to learn to love because only in this way we fulfill our call to become human, so human as to become divine. It is not a comfortable way: if you choose to take this way then you will find on it only indications to reach the goal: to be capable like the Father of total gift and absolute forgiveness. Here lies the essence of our humanity, as the Creator has always thought it.

It is true: it seems too difficult for us but remember: “Nothing is impossible to God”.

O merciful Lord, transform our hearts and our minds with the strengths of your grace, so that we will be capable to love and forgive as you do. Help us to build a world without violence and hatred, help us to teach this message to our children, the future of the humankind. Through Christ our Lord.