Piero is a priest

For a week, sleep disappears and the ordination arrives too quickly. Family members, relatives, friends, Jesuits arrive, and with them, a mixed desire: to be with everyone and, at the same time, to gather in silence. The main feeling in the days leading up to the ordination is gratitude towards those who, with great patience and availability, have helped me in the practical organisation (and moral support).

A big thank you goes to the Jesuits of the San Saba community, to whom I am grateful for the beauty of their fraternal closeness and for their practical help in organising the ceremony: from the choir to the liturgical service (assisted by the extraordinary expertise of Father Massimo), to the inevitable “thurible lessons” and fundamental “liturgical insights”. Preparing for ordination while feeling at home, among the community and parish, was a great help to me.

I struggle to define the emotions and feelings of the celebration: joy, fear, anxiety, peace, perplexity? Certainly, I felt great consolation in having my novitiate companions, with whom we began this beautiful adventure of life in the Society, close by and present at the ceremony. I am not sure I fully understand what has happened, but I feel accompanied in what is a central stage of the difficult happiness of trying to follow Christ.

Now that the organisational hustle and bustle is over, my gratitude extends to the journey we have made over the years. So many joys, adventures, encounters and discoveries; challenges, complexities, disappointments and moments of fatigue that enrich the beauty of the adventure. I am especially grateful to the Lord for the many brothers I have met along the way: from the novitiate to the philosophy course, passing through Romania and experiences outside the province, such as my time in Paris and the Berkeley experience. A rich humanity, not without difficulties and fragility, never sadly perfect, always surprising and alive. I often feel that I have received more than I have given, and for this too I am grateful. Looking back on my past experience, I have always felt accompanied by the Lord, in joys as well as in difficulties.

I don’t know what awaits me now. Apart from a few Masses in San Saba and the surrounding area, this first week ‘as a priest’ has been a time of discovery of the sacrament of confession in the church of St Ignatius. It is a great consolation for me to listen to people who are sometimes suffering and searching, deep in their hearts, for meaning, peace and consolation. Words often fail me, but the desire to let myself be guided by the Father remains alive, to try to convey something of a God who is always ready to forgive.

In the immediate future, I am returning to Berkeley. Biblical study remains my main mission, but my desire is to enrich its perspectives and horizons with a small but intense pastoral dimension, primarily in the ministry of confession at Saint Quentin Prison. The summer will be rich in pastoral experiences and opportunities, with a flavour of adventure and discovery, between the East Coast and the West Coast.

In more general terms, and with an open view to the future, I cannot precisely define what my mission as a Jesuit priest in the Society will be. I could quote documents, theological texts or reflections, but it is easier for me to speak of the desire I feel: to be ever more rooted in Christ and to open myself to the challenges and missions that life in the Society will offer me, with this sole desire and with the ministries that will be entrusted to me. Whether it is a return to Romania, which has remained in my heart since my teaching days, or somewhere else, my greatest desire is simply to open myself more and more to Christ and to the faces I will encounter in the missions to which I am called.