Against The Grain

Sunday, October 25, 2009

"The Challenge of Fatherhood", by Massimo Camisasca

The Fraternity of St. Charles Borromeo is a society of missionary priests working around the world. We live community life together and work in parishes, schools, universities, and hospitals.

Mons. Massimo Camisasca, founder and general superior of the Fraternity of St. Charles, has educated priests and seminarians for twenty-five years. A new translation of one of Fr. Camisasca’s fundamental works has just been published by Human Adventure Books: The Challenge of Fatherhood: Thoughts on the Priesthood (September 2009)

The first part of this book contains several lessons given to his seminarians during their formation. The second part is articulated around five words: the three “classic” terms (poverty, virginity, and obedience) are completed with reflections on fatherhood and fruitfulness.

An excerpt from the book:

“When God conceives of our face, he conceives of it in its complete form, even though each of us has to achieve it in time as a progressive discovery. And each one of us experiences his own freedom as the possibility of corresponding to the Father’s will, to God’s will. This progressive discovery of our personal destiny usually happens through difficulty and pain. It is often through suffering that we begin truly to know. We come to understand as if by putting together the pieces of a puzzle or weaving together the strands of a tapestry. In God, however, there is no progression. He has a perfectly clear idea of what our face looks like, and he is patient enough to let it unveiled before our eyes, too: slowly, sometimes even through contradictions, zig-zags, second thoughts. This is why we must not make the mistake of thinking, say, that something that blocks our path for a moment thwarts it radically. It is just a moment of darkness that we need in order to fall in love again with the light, to rediscover the light, to walk more resolutely in and towards it. Our freedom matures along the path of this ‘groping’ (see Acts 17:27).” (pgs. 11-12)

(HT: Apolonio Latar, former blogger, now a seminarian of the Priestly Fraternity of the Missionaries of St. Charles Borromeo, studying in Rome).