A particularly solemn anniversary of the patron saint Vigilio, celebrated in Trento on Wednesday 26 June in Trento, presided over by the archbishop emeritus, mons. Luigi Bressan, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of his priestly ordination and 35th anniversary of his episcopate: “Thank you for your passion for the Gospel and the human energy with which you have guided this Church, opening it to the world. Thank you for the discretion, enthusiasm, vitality, and availability with which you continue to accompany and serve it”.
In his homily, the bishop emeritus recalled the essential features of the episcopate of the patron saint Vigilius, third bishop of Trento: “He was not a spiritualist who neglected the social dimension of the Christian faith; he founded an asylum, a place of welcome and care; indeed, he affirmed that the purpose of the Christian mission was to bring peace in a dimension greater than simple coexistence”.
And he recalled the ‘passion’ of Saint Vigilius for Jesus: “In the Letters of Vigilius, one feels the admiration for Christ. In fact, for him Christ is Master and Lord, the one who brought living water to men and knows how to plant a new energy in them. He is like a cornerstone on which a solid house can be built and is the guarantor for those who bear witness to him, throughout our existence. The Christological message often returns, so it is not possible to reduce celebrations to external scenography (which, if well oriented are a contribution) or Christianity itself to a civil religion, political word or pure social ethics, uprooting it from Christ. Today in our Western world too many think that it is not necessary to resort to him”.
Saint Viglio evangelized: “He knew that evangelization required listening, dialogue, proposals, prayer… but he wanted everyone to receive the lifeblood that transforms us from producers of limited results into builders of peace and fullness of life, in the broadest sense of such words, with lasting fruits in daily life and beyond the earthly journey itself”.
At the end of the liturgy, the bishop of Trento, Msgr. Lauro Tisi, as has happened since the beginning of his episcopate on the occasion of the patron saint, donated his new Letter to the community, entitled ‘The bet’: “I start from a clearly provocative question: on whom or what do we bet in our lives? Do we prefer to draw lots, testing our luck as happens to more and more people, even in our Trentino, struggling with the plague of gambling?
The proposal I make to you, to those who believe and those who do not believe is: let’s bet on meekness, as Jesus expressed it. Not the virtue of those who renounce responsibility or hide, but the virtue of those who say: I want your thought and your life to exist. If we dare meekness we could give hope and a future to a world that is overwhelmed by so much violence”.
The letter is an invitation to experience the ‘meekness’ of Jesus: “The meekness of Jesus, to the point of making room for condemnation, passion and death in the embrace of the cross, sees the Holy Spirit as the protagonist. He makes Jesus a meek Man, because he allows the eyes of the Son to make him the meek gaze of the Father. Meekness is therefore an extraordinary gift of the Holy Spirit. It is the triumph of the Trinitarian Communion. A God (to quote Elmar Salmann) free and liberating, Mother but without being suffocating, Father but not paternalistic, a space of communion”.
Hence the request to the Christian community to live meekness: “I invite every Christian community in Trentino to ask for the gift of the Holy Spirit to cultivate meekness. A Church capable of relaunching life, inhabited by the Spirit, as a triumph of meekness. We are asked to abandon a model of a Church that is generally sad and sullen to embrace a Church that looks at the world and the time in which it lives not with resentment or hostility, but with the eyes of the inclusive love of Jesus.
Rather than lingering to lament the lack of participation in our liturgies, why not instead try to imagine and spend ourselves in giving life to a Eucharist that is a celebration for the possibility of drawing on the very meekness of God? Reality would seem to prevent such a desire: the war on our doorstep, the environmental crisis, widespread relational difficulties that often lead to ferocious aggression, job insecurity, disaffection with participation at multiple levels, from politics to associative life, to ecclesial”.
Two examples of meekness remembered in the pastoral letter: the late Trentino priest Don Renzo Caserotti who recently passed away and a young Trentino man, Alfredo Dall’Oglio, who emigrated from Borgo to France, was active in the Catholic working youth and died in a concentration camp in Berlin in 1944, at just 23 years old.
(Photo: Diocese of Trento)
