From Mornese to Nizza Monferrato—A Journey to Holiness

Day 6: Concluding Mass: Homily:

SAINT MARIA DOMENICA MAZZARELLO: FROM MORNESE TO NIZZA MONFERRATO—A JOURNEY TO HOLINESS. Retreat to the FMAs, Bellefonte Outreach, Shillong.

Holiness is not a favourite topic, even in the religious circles. The lively witness of holiness of St Mary Mazzarello could help us to re-focus our vision on this essential element of sanctity in our lives. Holiness is not a vocation for some, but a vocation for all. Each and every one of us is called to holiness. 

The first few pages of the newly released Apostolic Exhortation Gaudete et Exsultate (Rejoice and Be Glad) speaks of “saints next door”: imperfect people in whom the grace of God works nonetheless. We will always be imperfect people. If we acknowledge it, and allow God to work in and through us, then this can make us saints. Holiness is not about being perfect, but about acknowledging that we are imperfect. Only God is good, only God is purely holy. 

Here we are not thinking only of those already beatified and canonized. Those canonized saints are only the tip of the iceberg. Here we are talking of sanctity that is seen on the streets in our neighbourhood, even in our own circles, day in and day out. The Holy Spirit, the document says, bestows holiness in abundance among God’s people, among us all. We need to bring this holiness to the streets, to our own neighbourhood. 

Have we kept Mary Mazzarello confined to Mornese? She is a saint of the Church… Let us give her to the young people, and to the world. But of course we need new packaging. Even the young will acknowledge that holiness is attractive. 

There is an urgency to launch this new appeal to holiness. Clearly, this cannot be done merely by repeating formulas and slogans, repeating hackneyed expressions or presenting again and again the symbols that may not have any meaning in the present context. Overly synthetic expressions, when repeated too often, run the risk of eclipsing the original intuitions and questions most relevant to current practice, if not properly decoded. 

From Mornese to Nizza Monferrato. Here I want all of us to focus on the journey. Her growth into a saint is tremendous, and is worthy of imitation. If we are only going to talk praises of our saints, without imitating them, then what is the use of such a discourse? So this commemoration is not so much about Mary Mazzarello, as it is about us, about our imitating her. 

Nizza Monferrato: a city very much loved by Don Bosco, sanctified by the presence of Mary Mazzarello, and others like Blessed Maddalena Morano, Venerable Sr. Teresa Valsé Pantellini, and Mother Elisa Roncallo. 

The earthly story of this humble and great woman, Saint Mary Domenica Mazzarello – who died at Nizza Monferrato on May 14, 1881 – is a piece of history that should be incarnated in our neighbourhood. It is humility of heart which attracts God’s kindness. If one word that could describe holiness it is this: “humility.” One who gives the credit to the Other, to God, not oneself. This is sanctity. Humility is sanctity. One who is holy doesn’t have the “I” sickness”: I, me, myself, I did, I achieved, I planned it, I succeeded, I accomplished, I solved the problem, etc. (See how jarring these statements are.) The saint is precisely one who has no “I” to protect or project. His or her “I” is in conscious union with the “I AM” of God. Truly holy people are always humble people. How true in Mother Mazzarello’s life! 

Why humility? The closer you get to the Light, the more of your shadow you see. No person or group is perfect; no culture is perfect; no church is perfect; no tradition is perfect: we will all manifest truth as well as falsity, right as well as wrong, good as well as evil, knowledge as well as ignorance, light as well as darkness, holiness as well as impiety. Holiness is about growing and maturity, to begin again and again in order to grow and mature. Pope Benedict XVI puts it in an excellent way: “Holiness does not consist in not making mistakes or never sinning. Holiness grows with capacity for conversion, repentance, willingness to begin again, and above all with the capacity for reconciliation and forgiveness.” 

Each person bears traces of God, each person resonates God’s voice and His presence. One day a child, after having long contemplated the windows of the parish, said that the saints are those who let so much light pass through them. They become transparent. The saints in fact reflect the face of God, make us perceive the traits of his beauty, goodness, wisdom. This is how (with this inspiration of holiness) that Mary Mazzarello, along with Don Bosco, founded the Institute of the FMA and promoted with dedication and intelligence the work commissioned to him in Nizza for the education of girls. Do we tend to forget the contemplative aspect of our foundations? I don’t even need to mention the danger of activism, especially in our Salesian lives. Or even, the danger of reducing contemplation to mere sensationalism and devotional piety. 

Now, if Mornese gave Mary Mazzarello her existence, her life, and also the environment for her apostolic accomplishments, Nizza opened up and widened her horizons to the fullness of life. Mornese is the beginning, Nizza is the fulfillment; Mornese is the sowing, Nizza the harvest; Mornese is the source, Nizza is the river that flows to reach the ends of the world; if Mornese is compared to Bethlehem, it has to be complemented with Nizza, a Calvary experience. 

In one of Michelangelo’s masterpieces we see that the face of the Day appears finished only in the Night. The night, like death, is the place of the completed work. The face of the day can only be completely revealed when it has set. Life and death are not opposites; night and day are not opposites. The fact that life and death are “not two” is extremely difficult to grasp, not because it is so complex, but because it is so simple (Ken Wilber). We miss the unity of life and death where our ordinary mind begins to think about it (Kathleen Dowling Singh). 

So for Mary Mazzarello: in Nizza, where she lives a little over two years: from February 4, 1879 to May 14, 1881, she reaches full human and religious maturity; only here she welcomes the Lord who transfigures her consecration beyond death into eternal glory. 

Death. I’m not merely talking of the final, physical death. I’m referring to the various experiences at the House of Nizza that Mary Mazzarello had to undergo—symbolising a death to her ego in imitation of her Master and Lord. We don’t see in her any self-seeking or self-centredness. She with her first sisters at Nizza Monferrato had joyous and exhilarating experiences, but also painful hours of trepidation, of perplexity, of fear, noted both by herself in the letters, and by the Institute’s History (Cronistoria). [It is interesting to note that 44 out of 68 letters of hers are written at Nizza.] The experiences of difficulty, experienced by the community in the two years spent by Mary Mazzarello at Nizza, reveal some tremendous characteristic features of hers and the interiority and strength of her personality as a woman and educator. You will certainly remember the incident of the young Jewish woman Annetta Bedarida; and how people had shouted, “Death to the Sisters!” and many other misunderstandings connected to this event. These and some other experiences of Mary Mazzarello witness to a total self-giving, in patient suffering, to her people. Holiness without suffering seems completely incomplete! 

Nizza is not so much the end or the place of death for Mary Mazzarello, but the birth of a mature charism, and the goal of her human and spiritual journey. She herself said in an encounter with our Lord Jesus in one of her last life sequences, recorded with precision and love by Don John Baptist Lemoyne who was assisting her: “Ah, if they knew you as I now know you...!” Here, in fact, is the highest experience of her conforming into Christ, as the last years condense her entire journey into love. 

This journey of Mother Mazzarello is a journey of love. The journey of holiness is a journey of love. Love as total giving of herself. To love is to suffer, to love is to die. Here at the foot of Mother Mazzarello we learn not competition but compassion, we learn the essence of interiority, we learn simplicity, humility, dying to one’s own ego; we learn depth. From her we learn psychological wholeness and spiritual holiness. But above all, we learn how to love, how to love God: receiving love and giving love. 

Yes, dear friends, it is always time to love God. Holiness is about growing into loving God, loving oneself, and loving others. It is always time to love God. Here and now. The time is now, the place is here. Let Mother Mazzarello’s sanctity inspire our lives, concretely seen here and now amidst the people we work for in this Province, amidst the circumstances that we find ourselves in, especially as consecrated communities committed to true contemplation in action. 

May God keep you in peace and love and joy. May you all be authentic instruments of love like Mother Mazzarello.