FF's Diary 5th Day GIOVE

DIARY of St. Marienthal

FIFTH DAY 20130912 THURSDAY

This morning at the Mass it was only me and the nuns. After breakfast we filmed what I experienced yesterday morning. I wanted to talk to the Rektor. But he wasn't at home. I printed some more scenes today and I wrote a letter to the pope.

Dear Pope Francisco,

I am writing this letter from St. Marienthal (Germany). 18 years ago I came here, I was only 30. During a school trip to Salzburg I had met my austrian colleague from the Ursulinen and she had invited me to write a letter to Sister Ingeborg, at that time Headmaster of the St. Ursula Scule in Hannover to ask her to join the network. She accepted and I could participate to the first meeting (there were only teachers) in 1995. The first meeting with the students was in 1996, but I couldn't come, so I asked Fabrizio Falzini, who had started to teach German in my school to come with the students. Here in St. Marienthal I had a strong mystical experience while I was walking between the stations of the Cross, on the hill in front of the Monastery. I heard an interior voice calling me: “Faust! Faust! Faust!” “Yes, My Lord here I am”. “Come to me and renew my Church”. I understood this call as a VOCATION, I thought God wanted me to be a priest. So, as soon as I returned to Rome I entered in the Seminar and in 1998, at the age of 33, I became a Jesuit Priest.

Now, after 18 years, for the first time I am back here in St. Marienthal, in the same place where I heard HIS voice for the first time.

I wanted to renew the Catholic Church, but I am afraid I wasn't successful in my mission. That's why I am writing to you this letter.

We were filming the scene of the reharsal (play within the play). I was only sitting there, I didn't have to speak. I wrote the letter to the pope and I read the LUMEN FIDEI. 

1. The light of Faith: this is how the Church’s tradition speaks of the great gift brought by Jesus. In John’s Gospel, Christ says of himself: "I have come as light into the world, that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness" (Jn 12:46). Saint Paul uses the same image: "God who said ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts" (2 Cor 4:6). The pagan world, which hungered for light, had seen the growth of the cult of the sun god, Sol Invictus, invoked each day at sunrise. Yet though the sun was born anew each morning, it was clearly incapable of casting its light on all of human existence. The sun does not illumine all reality; its rays cannot penetrate to the shadow of death, the place where men’s eyes are closed to its light. "No one — Saint Justin Martyr writes — has ever been ready to die for his faith in the sun".[1]Conscious of the immense horizon which their faith opened before them, Christians invoked Jesus as the true sun "whose rays bestow life".[2] To Martha, weeping for the death of her brother Lazarus, Jesus said: "Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?" (Jn 11:40). Those who believe, see; they see with a light that illumines their entire journey, for it comes from the risen Christ, the morning star which never sets.