By Marco Pio D'Elia - We wake up when the night isn't over yet. We're not the only ones impatient for dawn; there are those who took the bus at sunset so as not to be late. And even those who crossed entire skies at the risk of being there. Someone else still has a small stretch to cover. We prepare ourselves by clutching a flag in our backpacks, improvising songs, and sharing fragments of the road. It's the excited atmosphere of a holiday, with many guests, the celebration of an eagerly awaited friend. Rome today has this face: the face of someone rushing to an important appointment and carrying with them the joy of sharing it.
Diary of a party
"It's like celebrating one of our own," says Stefano , whose birthday is also in the square today. Pier Giorgio isn't the saint from a yellowed and dusty figurine, "but a shady character, in whom I see myself and my friends: imperfect, with his own inconsistencies, but so capable of making room for God." The sanctity that the Church recognizes in him today doesn't hide the cracks, doesn't erase the struggles; rather, it's the transparency with which life lets the light filter through. It's the certainty that grace doesn't require perfection, but availability. And so, yes, we can say we're celebrating a friend, in whom we celebrate "the perfection of simplicity, of authenticity, of a life entrusted with trust to others and to the Lord." And perhaps it's the consoling wonder of this truth that brings Stefano to tears.
Peter , however, clinging to the barrier separating the sectors of the square, speaks of a sanctity that in Pier Giorgio becomes possible, concrete, because "it doesn't take 'leaving normal life' to live the Gospel fully." Sanctity is a life that doesn't try to escape from its own responsibilities, nor isolate itself from the lives of others. On the contrary, "it keeps us in the world, it immerses us in it with a different perspective on things."
That evangelical gaze that Marinella recognizes "not in disinterested eyes, but in an open heart, in outstretched hands, in a tenderness that becomes a posture always turned 'upward.'" "Pier Giorgio challenges our lives," adds Nicola with the affectionate severity he addresses to a dear friend who shakes up our daily routines, our reassuring balances, our tranquil habits. But at the same time, "beyond challenging our lives, he becomes our companion." Pier Giorgio's life ignites a subtle nostalgia, a sweet and imperious call to what we do not yet inhabit. And with it, a desire is born that knows no haste: the desire for the Lord, which drives us to seek him in every place, in every situation, in every person.
Giving one's life over to the surprise of every day
Here, the sun rising on the horizon makes the sense of our presence clearer. We feel an invitation to recognize ourselves as saints, each with our own stories. Pier Giorgio reminds us that in Saint Peter's we are gathered not "for" him, but "with" him. To inhabit together the Church and the world as living, shared experiences, made of uncertain steps, of open hearts, as places of sanctification of daily life. There is no abstraction in holiness: it is this path traveled together, this awaiting the dawn that always begins again, this celebration of life surrendered and welcomed. And so, amid the sound of footsteps and the silence of prayers, we discover that being saints means, first of all, being together, walking with the Lord, surrendering our lives to the surprises of each day.
* The amazement on the faces of the young people of AC was published in Segno nel mondo, an insert of Avvenire on Tuesday 9 September