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Dear Father Angelo,

I’m Guido, it’s not easy to explain everything without many long facets, but the point is: 1) Many years ago I asked God to bring me, my wife and my children to Heaven and I would have been willing to live a period equal to the years, I think of Saint Teresina, without any consolation. 2) Some time ago, during the consecration, I asked Jesus if He could bring me, my wife and my children to Heaven without going through Purgatory. 3) Some months ago, again when the presbyter raised the Body and Blood of Christ, I asked Him to be able to undergo Purgatory in place of my wife and my children, here on earth or in Heaven. If I think about it I believe I asked something too big, but I believe!… I trust Jesus.

Where is the problem?… I miss joy, the daily Rosary is a pain! I always think of you, Father Angelo, who indicated how to recite the Rosary, but I get lost in a thousand thoughts. On Sunday I’m so happy to go to church, I carefully listen, but I’m a coward because I am happy when it ends and I do not wish it never ends. When I am with other people I laugh and joke and try to bring some kindness to everyone and where I can’t love, I silently pray for it, but when I am alone with myself, I see all my desolation, the darkness, an emptiness inside, a sort of dying, NOT JOY.

I am very used to it and I think that if someone suddenly entered my head… he would go crazy, maybe it takes training but sometimes I can’t do it, I don’t find it right, it’s cruel to live like this where the devil often tells you that God does not exist. My wife can’t help me, she is closed in on herself, she has her limits and her crosses, including me!… always looking for love… or maybe just sex. But if God told me: “This is your Purgatory”, I would be honoured, but the silence torments me.  For five years now, when I open the Gospel, I often read the verses in which John the Baptist is spoken of, I do not understand what this great man has to do with me, I only know that if today God wants to console me with a random passage from the Gospel, it is always with him… the Baptist, it’s a small consolation but I feel there is something eternally great about it.

Your eventual silence would certainly not help me, but it would make me smile in this arid desert, but I understand  that you don’t have a magic wand, and Lord’s ways truly are infinite and complicated. I’ve also taken into account the hypothesis of a mixture with a form of depression, I wouldn’t be the first, but in the end He always moves the threads of my life. I thank God for having known you and for how you answer without ever judging the person who writes to you, this cannot be that, only God’s work, I would make an immense effort.

I don’t know if these things should preferably stay between me and God, but believe me, I feel terribly lonely and I have only Him listening to me… but He doesn’t speak to me or, better, He doesn’t want to right now, maybe for my own sake.

May Jesus Christ enlighten you and ask for me something that can give me courage, I’m sure He will listen to you.

Peace, Guido.

Dear Guido,

you may have thought that I would not have answered you, since it has been a long time since your email. But only today I reached yours. I owe you an apology.

1. You insist saying that the Lord does not speak to you, that you open the Scriptures and the Baptist always comes to you. But when you go to the Mass the Lord speaks to you explicitly. He even talks to you for a long time with three readings, at the end of which you say: Thanks be to God, praise to Christ. But is it “thank you” you say? The compliment is true: praise to you… Because if you say these words it means that you have understood that the Lord had spoken to you, that He has spoken words of eternal life to you, that no one speaks to you as He does. Now instead you say that the Lord does not speak to you. Then you see: it is not true that the Lord does not speak to you. It is rather true that we are deaf and distracted.

2. I advise you to think about the words that the Lord tells you at Mass. He speaks to you, to shed light on your needs, to illuminate your way, to give you strength, to console you. Keep those words in your heart as in a casket. They are very precious.

3. How many times, participating in the feasts of Our Lady, have you heard proclaimed these words of the Lord: “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and put it into practice”. Because after hearing the word of the lord you don’t ask yourself: what did the Lord say to me? Indeed, what should I do now to put it into practice?

4. Sometimes you will not be able to give yourself the answer. And then you will ask Jesus: What did you tell me? What did you want to tell me? Grasping the concept, you will ask him again: Jesus, what must I do to put your word into practice? If you will stay silent, listening to His word and if your heart is pure, you will immediately understand the message and how you must embody it.

5. I also suggest you do another thing. Since the words that the Lord told you are the most important and the most enlightening, think them over during the day. Rethink them while you pray with the Rosary which is a prayer that must become an anchor during your day. The Rosary is a wide prayer. While we say Our Father and the Hail Marys we meet the Lord and Our Lady. It is spontaneous to listen to what they tell us while they are with us. And you will realize that the Lord repeats to you in the Rosary the words you heard on Sunday going to church or that He said to you in the Mass of the day. Virgin Mary will suggest to you how to put them in practice, because She was the first doing this.

6. Then your life will become more internal and it will change completely. You will bring the Gospel, which is what Jesus’ feelings say, into your life. Then you will understand how true the words that Jesus said are: “The kingdom of Heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and mixed in three measures of flour, until it was all leavened” (Mt 13,33) because your life will rise with the leaven of the Gospel. It will be more beautiful and above all more profitable for you and for those to whom you dedicate yourself.

7. Therefore it begins again in silence. Be more inward. Say fewer words and let Him speak. Let Him shape your heart as He speaks to you. Our Christian experience is too beautiful when we live it like this.

While I wish you all this, I assure you of my prayers and I bless you.

Father Angelo

Translated by Rossella Silvestri