381 - EVERYTHING TO EVERYBODY

First Encounter with Father Piamarta - By Pier Giordano Cabra

Chapter Four

1. On the twenty-third of December, 1865 Father Piamarta was ordained a Priest. He was twenty four year's old. On Christmas day he celebrated his first Mass in Bedizzole where Father Pezzana was Pastor. The next day he went to Carzago Riviera to serve as a Parish Priest and help the Pastor there. After a short time Father Pezzana was able to move him to Bedizzole where the two of them worked together for one year. Following this both were assigned together to the central civic Parish of Saint Alexander. This brings us to 1870.

2. “O Lord, make me a useful servant” Father Piamarta had prayed when saying his first Mass. It soon became apparent that this young man had the makings of a good Pastor. “Look, he really is a Saint” whispered the people. Sick people waited for his visits, others, attracted by the fame of his wisdom, waited to speak with him, his homilies were very moving, he said the Mass in a way that helped the people enter in more fully, more deeply.... Finally, when he founded the Oratory of Saint Alexander the boys loved him so much they wouldn't leave him for a minute.

3. In a short time everybody was speaking about him. “We have a good priest.” one man said. “Thank God somebody thinks about our children” the mothers said. “How pale he looks”... “he runs all day”... “he is so devout”... “the young like him a lot”... “he never stops” …. “who knows if he will be with us for long” ...and so the talk went.

4. The Oratory of Saint Alexander consisted of a Sacristy, and a courtyard where the boys gathered around their priest. He involved so many boys that he left an unforgettable impression during those years. As Parish Priest, Father Piamarta gathered the boys together, spoke with them, organized walks, and sought out places where they could play. He roused their thoughts to the things of God. Letters gathered from this time period reveal something of the atmosphere of the environment he created: “For us this Parish Priest was something special, extraordinary”. “He wanted to save the young from indifference and the loss of religion”. In one letter a friend answered an anticlerical lawyer who wanted to build a lay community center: “Dear Lawyer, since in the oratories we have priests like Father Piamarta, your lay community center would be useless for you to build”

5. But this young Parish Priest had a secret wound. Every time he saw a poor and abandoned boy he felt a pang in his heart for that orphan. ...“the oratory is a very good thing, but what about those boys without a family, without love or support behind them; those who haven't the courage to come to the oratory because they are so poor and badly dressed? What will happen to them? Who will think of them? Will I have to resign myself to visit them in prison in the not so distant future? Those poor boys, sons of broken families, is it their destiny to live in the streets? From the deep wound within him he heard a voice: “What you do to one of these little children you do to me”. “You have to do something”. “Do not let others do what I have destined to you”. “What can I do? I'm alone and I have no money”, he answered himself.

6. However, the voice was insistent and it grew stronger; it deprived him of sleep and peace. “Is it really Our Lord? Does he really want me to consecrate my life to them?” He questioned. One day after praying for a long time in front of the Tabernacle, he realized clearly that this was his new path. “I will consecrate my life to those boys. They will be my life” Father Piamarta resolved. In the same moment a very precise plan took shape in his mind: Give them a family, teach them a job, teach them to live as men and as Christians in the city of Brescia, which was then experiencing a period of economic development. He immediately thought about discussing his plan with Monsignor Pietro Capretti.

Traduzione a cura di Mary Levine e Matteo Toschi