Dear reader friends,,
the story of Paderno Dugnano, with an entire family – father Fabio, mother Daniela and 12-year-old Lorenzo – exterminated by the eldest son, 17-year-old Riccardo, continues, I confess, to turn inside me and to worry me, despite the days that have passed since the crime. We have asked ourselves and continue to ask ourselves why, looking for remote and close causes, reflecting – rightly – on youth distress (see also our article on page 10). Right, we need it. But we also need to find a meaning, to “decipher the mystery”, as the Archbishop of Milan, Mario Delpini, did – with great tact and delicacy, using his imagination, who gave the homily on the day of the triple funeral last September 12.
Delpini put himself in the shoes of the three victims, poetically imagining how each of them responds to the questions that God asks them when they appear before Him. I confess that the words moved me, as I imagine they moved those present in the church. I remembered a homily heard at the funeral of a man in his early forties, in which the parish priest, with simple but heartfelt and “blessed” words, expressed our “bewilderment” but also the hope anchored in the Word of God.
For little Lorenzo’s response, the archbishop imagined his concern for his murderous brother: “How will he do without me, Riccardo, my big brother, my intelligent brother? Here I want to be close to him always, I want to console his tears, I want to calm his fears, I want to hope with him and for him.” In the mouth of mother Daniela he put love and mystery: “The mother gives birth and lets her children go on their way, but I will continue to inhabit the mystery, I want to persist in sowing a spark of light, even in the darkest darkness, I want to be close to Riccardo to continue to reassure him in the face of the mystery.” And to father Fabio he has him say: “My Riccardo has not yet learned to express in words what is stirring, tangling, freezing inside his soul. I want to be close to Riccardo and help him say the right words, to give the right name to life, even to pain, even to anger.”
In the words of all three, the mystery of the resurrection, of life in God, transpired: “Behold, I am alive and I want to sing life, because I am here with you, Lord God!”, “in the mystery you dwell, Lord God, and I am with you!”; “Behold: I am alive with you, Lord, to have a word to say to my Riccardo”. On the basis of the Word of God, the archbishop thus tried to “decipher the enigma”, collecting from Lorenzo, Daniela, Fabio “the song of life and of the young hope of a brother, the intensity of the mysterious love of a mother and the responsibility of the true word of a father”. Pietas, words of love, of forgiveness, of hope, which we need and which come like a balm. I don’t know if we realize what a reserve of hope there is in the Christian faith. Even in the face of evil that we cannot fully “rationalize,” even in the mystery that surrounds us, hope can peep out like a “gentle light” and help us live the present that is given to us and illuminate it also for those close to us.