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 BLESSED JAMES ALBERIONE AND
VENERABLE
FRANCESCO CHIESA:
UNITED IN THEIR PRIESTHOOD
fr. Antonio F. da Silva, ssp
Blessed James
Alberione has always had a very high esteem for the vocation and
ministry of the priest. He has met and worked with many priests both
in the Diocese of Alba and in his own religious family. But the
priestly binomial Chiesa-Alberione has an unmatched place in the
twentieth century.
Fr. Luigi Rolfo,
who is until now the most authoritative biographer of the Founder of
the Pauline Family, strongly affirmed:
“We must say,
first of all, that [Canon Chiesa] has formed Fr. Alberione. I think
we can affirm that, as the Church of Turin would not have had a Don
Bosco, if there had not been a Don Cafasso, so the Church of Alba
would not have had a Don Alberione without a Canon Chiesa. Don
Alberione is a creature of his. He influenced him not only through
his advices, not only through his directives as his spiritual
director, confessor and master, but principally as his model”.
Fr. Alberione has
repeatedly recalled the impact that the priest Francesco Chiesa had
on him during his first days in the Seminary at Alba. Meaningful,
for example, is this passage of his deposition during the cause of
the Canon’s beatification and canonization:
“When I entered
the seminary, being ignorant of everything, I turned to a seminarian
to know who was that priest who was so recollected, inspiring candor
and simplicity. And he answered me saying: ‘That is the priest of
the Madonna’”.
In the same
deposition he affirms: “…then I had him as professor of philosophy
and then of theology; I had him as professor of sociology, and in
the course of moral theology (then lasting two years), he taught me
sacred art, eloquence and pastoral science”.
In 1960, before
120 Paulines of the first hour, Fr. Alberione, by then about to hand
over the testament of his life, was able to reread the history of
the Pauline Family in these terms: “The history of the mercies of
God on us. The hand of God upon me. How he has led us ”.
But the living and
considering of history in this light is part of the entire existence
of Fr. Alberione, who from his youth had learned from Canon Chiesa
to put himself at the school of history, especially in considering
the events of the present in light of the Eucharist, before the
tabernacle. It was at the school Jesus Master in the Eucharist that
history became for him the teacher of life.
Stimulated by the
teachings of the Church of his time, for example by those of
Giuseppe Toniolo, that placed in the Eucharist, the sacrament of
love, the future of society, Fr. Alberione moved from the Sacrament
of Unity to the unification of all things in Christ.
This spirituality
of the history of salvation has allowed Fr. Alberione, even during
the very dangerous circumstances of 1937, to denounce “the modern
idolatry of the State” and to courageously affirm in the face of
Nazism, Fascism and Bolshevism:
“In order to
destroy, hate is enough; to build up, faith and love are needed.
God did not
promise to the Church that he would destroy all her adversaries, but
that she will not be destroyed by any power of hell. The Word of the
Master about the darnel always comes back and the final conclusion
will be seen well when the Angels will separate the good from the
bad. The study of every truth has three historical moments: thesis,
crisis, synthesis. Today too many are afflicted by crises. To
synthesize and universalize means to find GOD, Jesus Christ, the
Church, grace. In Jesus, Way Truth and Life”.
During the whole
period of the formation of Fr.Alberione, going on in the Church and
in society were “deep upheavals” (AD 48): perturbations and
disorientations caused by modernism, by new discoveries and by
serious social evils. He says: “These things and experiences,
meditated before the Blessed Sacrament... Everything had been a
lesson and an orientation” (cf AD 56).
These
testimonies of Fr. Alberione lead us to understand the importanza of
his statement about the method of prayer, originated by Eymard but
taught to him by Canon Chiesa:
“From
Canon Chiesa he had learned to trasform everything into an object of
meditation and prayer before the Divine Master: to adore, thank,
propitiate, ask” (AD 68).
These traditional four purposes of
sacrifice have become for the young Alberione a method of prayer
and a valid method of life and pastoral that is attentive “to the
new needs” of humanity (cf AD 49).
Don Rolfo says: “I think that Canon
Chiesa was convinced, like Fr. Alberione, of the necessity and
efficacy of the press and that he loved to work for it not less than
he”.
Indeed, in his canonical deposition
Fr. Alberione affirms that after the showing of some film Canon
Chiesa exhorted orientation to the apostolate of cinema that
appeared even more efficacious than the press apostolate. Fr.
Alberione adds: “We can say that in him there was some kind of
intuition about what could happen afterwards, intuition that I
attribute to his spirit of prayer”.
These few recollections allow us to
sense in what way Canon Chiesa has contributed to the formation of
the missionary ideal and priestly zeal of Fr. Alberione, the same
that the latter lived and proposed to his Pauline Family:
“Action and prayer led to a Christian
social work that tends to heal Governments, the schools, the laws,
the family, relations between classes and nations. So that Christ,
Way, Truth and Life may reign in the world! The Pauline Family has
here a big task and responsibility» (AD 63).
More than one time Fr.Alberione has
considered Venerable Francesco Chiesa as the “Godfather of the
Pauline Family”. On his part Canon Chiesa saw in the progress of the
Pauline Family a realization of his priestly mission because he
considered himself a true Pauline, as he confided to Fr. Alberione
on his deathbed. We learn this from Fr. Alberione’s testimony in the
canonical cause of beatification and canonization, when he relates
the phrase that Canon Chiesa said to him during that solemn moment:
“Truly, I have always been a Pauline and I have never repented being
it”.
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