The Way: Meditations for a Christian Life

II

Biographical Information

Fr Serafino Tognetti, born in Bologna in 1960, is a priest in the monastic Community founded by Fr Divo Barsotti. After his degree in Science, he moved to Florence to study Theology. He became a priest in 1990 and was the first successor to Fr Barsotti as head of the Community. For several years he hosted a programme on spirituality on Radio Maria, and he has published a number of books, among which are the first biography of Fr Barsotti, Divo Barsotti, Priest, Mystic, Father (St Pauls), a portrait of the Curee D’Ars, Ho visto Dio in un uomo (Shalom), and more recently, La Preghiera (Parva). He has preached courses of spiritual exercises to religious communities, priests and lay-people in various parts of Italy.

He currently lives in the monastery Casa San Sergio in the hills of Florence.

Introduction

Aurelio Porfiri

I’ve known Fr Serafino Tognetti for some time and I’ve always been deeply impressed by his spiritual meditations. Impressed but not surprised, as I know very well that coming from the school of Divo Barsotti, he can only be expected to show such depth of thought and concept. Divo Barsotti was a genius of Christian spirituality and Fr Serafino is following closely in his footsteps, as in this text.

Here Fr Serafino considers some important themes in spiritual life, such as weakness and many others. Also very interesting are his views on certain abuses in the liturgy, such as that of applause; all views which I wholeheartedly share. I wish you all much pleasure in this read, and hope you will experience the great spiritual relief that meditations such as these are able to bring about.

Preface

David W. Fagerberg

It is the most rudimentary and elementary truth of the Christian gospel that the believer should be united with Christ. We all understand it, we all expect it. This alliance with Jesus can be considered the content of faith, and the purpose of sacraments. Baptism unites us with Christ, in the Eucharist we commune with Christ. The objective of our daily prayer service of neighbor is to become more like Christ. This is the most rudimentary and elementary truth of the Christian gospel.

When we hear those words in Church it sounds soothing, but in this book Fr. Serafino faces up to the truth under the rigorous light of realism. Jesus calls us to save souls through suffering. It is not a pleasant message, but it is evidence of the very life of Our Lord. Do you want Christ’s life in you? Do you want to live Christ’s life? Do you seek evidence of Christ’s life in you? Then examine what Christ’s life was like. Weak. Small. Suffering. A lamb. The power of the world belongs to the evil one, with its trappings and displays of power, and Jesus does not play by those rules. He says that all authority has been given to him, and from that authority comes a power of love that is completely different from the power that comes from the world. Jesus will do the opposite of the prince of this world in order to bring about his Father’s kingdom.

Usually, when we hear St. Paul say he is strong in weakness (2 Cor 12:10) we like the sentiment because we are weak and looking for a way to enhance ourselves. But we are moving in the wrong direction. Paul is talking about the way love operates in Jesus, and so deep is his love for Jesus that he delights in experiencing for himself what his Lord experienced: weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and difficulties. If we want to be unified with Jesus then the experiences of the Lamb must become our experiences; the behavior and characteristics of the Lamb must become ours. We will not understand that weakness is strength until we see how it operates in Jesus, and imitate it. This book is a meditation on how that love works.

In all human history, Fr. Serafino says, no one had ever seen a lamb-king. No one had seen a divinity who makes himself gentle and a victim. Jesus comes into the world as a lamb and lets himself be eaten because he has the strength to take on evil. Therefore, as a Christian, I too, with my power of love, must love my enemy says Fr. Serafino. I absorb the evil and evil is defeated in me … The people of God are gentle people who conquer evil.

Why is this the case? What is the key to this enigma of weakness? The answer concerns love. Love can never really be expressed in power. It is self-contradictory to speak about forcing love. We must admit that we are people who love power, but that is because we are sinners, and even in our sinfully distorted view we understand that power cannot cause love. But that is exactly what God wants to do. More than anything else, he wants to cause love between himself and us, and he is willing to suffer to do it. God is dealing with human beings who are as skittish as rabbits – we run at the first motion – so he must approach us slowly, weakly, impotently. Human beings have this continual craving for signs of greatness and power … But God’s choice (and when God makes a choice he makes it forever) is the choice of impotence. To reveal himself to me, God makes himself small. Weakness can attract love in a way that power cannot, and the incarnation is all about attraction.

If we wish to be followers of the lamb-king, then this is the path we follow. Christ asks for lamb-disciples who will cooperate with him in saving the world, but on his terms only. We are only Christians insofar as we live our union with Jesus, and so participate in the salvation of the world. As Christians, we collaborate in this salvation. This collaboration with saving love redefines our experience of suffering. Fr. Serafino describes what Jesus does, and says we are to be doing the same thing, and that totally changes our understanding of suffering. We can participate in the salvation of our brothers and sisters by ourselves imitating Christ’s greatest act of charity: union with sinners. Yes, the salvation of the world is truly placed in the hands of the lambs … They enter into the dimension of the Lamb. This is to really understand Jesus.

When we talk about uniting ourselves to the passion of Jesus, it means suffering with him today, not just uniting myself to the benefits of his passion. In our trials the Lord gives us the gift of being able to take him into our own terms. If we want to embrace him, then, Fr. Serafino says, we should examine our trials in that light. That is the purpose of this thoughtful and challenging book. The authority of Christ brings a new kind of power, which the world does not recognize but which we discover in weakness.

Chapter 1

The Way of Weakness

The way of God

The great Russian writer Dostoyevsky states: You can argue all you like, but one thing is certain: both you and I know that science alone will never satisfy every human ideal, and that peace for mankind, the source of life, salvation from despair for all humanity and the guarantee of salvation for the whole universe is contained in these words: God was made flesh and dwelt among us.

God was made flesh: four little words, but they are worth more than the whole universe and the history of humanity put together.

For centuries Israel had been waiting for the arrival of a Messiah who would free the people from foreign domination and make Israel the leading nation of the world. At the time of Christ, this expectation was almost insistent, so much so, that when Jewish women married, they wanted to have lots of children in the hope that one of them would be the Messiah. For such a long time, the Jews had heard tell that one day a saviour would arrive, the great new prophet of the God of armies, the representative of that God who had made the bush burn in front of Moses, that God who aroused holy fear – they all knew very well the passage in Genesis: I heard the sound of you in the garden... and I was afraid (Gen 3,10). They were certainly expecting a mercenary leader who would liberate and save, so one who would come with great pomp and trappings; they were expecting a very powerful intervention from God on the world. They expected great things because they had read in the Law and the Prophets that God’s characteristics were omnipotence, greatness, holiness, infinity, transcendence.

But when, after this very long wait, the Messiah finally arrived, his birth was disconcerting, to say the least.

We too should approach divine revelation with an open mind, so as not to be left disturbed or excluded from meeting the real Saviour. If truth be told, we too are always expecting great signs, and without a revelation our rational side would perhaps seek another God.

That night, some shepherds were sleeping outside their barns and suddenly they saw angels, heard strange sounds, and were dazzled by a bright light as a voice proclaimed: Hurry! The Saviour has been born! At last! After such a long wait, the announcement came: Today the Saviour has been born. But how could they be sure this was the Messiah? If the hour of redemption was at hand, what would be the sign that they were not being deceived? The angels said: This will be the sign for you: a baby. Just imagine the shepherds’ faces! A strange sign indeed: a baby born in a stable... There are so many babies born every night! What is so extraordinary about this event? A baby is not an exceptional sign. And being born in a stable is certainly not impressive. An ordinary woman (in their eyes) in a stable (an unsuitable place) with a baby in her arms... This certainly did not seem a worthy sign for a king or a God. Neither does it to us, today.

Yet this is what the angels announced.

We are used to recognizing as signs extraordinary things, events that amaze us, that capture our attention. In this case, those who were announcing (the angels in Heaven) were more impressive than the sign they were announcing (a simple new-born baby). Which is the greatest phenomenon: a baby crying in his mother’s arms, or angels singing in the sky to the sound of trumpets? It’s obvious that the most astonishing and impressive sign is that of the angels. If I had been asked to orchestrate salvation, I would certainly not have given the sign proposed by the angels. In these modern times, we would organize the Saviour’s coming under the spotlight with fanfares and music, possibly with him coming directly down from the sky. This Saviour would arrive in a flash of light, or at least with signs of great power: if you are God, you must show yourself with power!

Instead, what is the sign? Here’s the first big surprise: his being human. And not even a glorious humanity: This is will be the sign for you: a baby in a stable. God could have become incarnate and appeared in the world when he was thirty, in his full maturity, in all his glory, in all his strength, with ten thousand horses, surrounded by a hundred thousand angels, with all the trappings of power. Of course he could have done this, because nothing is impossible to God. Instead, he does not appear in glorious humanity. To reveal himself, God chooses a poor place, a stable; he chooses a poor mother, because while Our Lady may be Queen of Heaven and Earth, in the eyes of those who saw her then, she was just an ordinary girl. What’s more, Mary came from the poorest village in the poorest region; in fact, Nazareth was a little village in Galilee, which nobody ever considered: Can anything good come from Nazareth? (Jn 1,46).

So, to come into the world and to speak to us, God chose a poor place and a poor mother, and he revealed himself to shepherds who were considered the least in the order of humanity. Shepherds counted for nothing; they were even exempt from going to the Temple because they had to look after the sheep even on the Sabbath.

This is the way of God.

In revealing himself, he made this choice: he presented himself without armies; the God of the burning bush presents himself as Jesus in the arms of Mary his mother. And that’s what truly amazes us.

But that’s not all: the Saviour has to be saved! The one who came to save must first be saved himself, for as soon as the