56: Missionary of the Sacred Heart: bringing the compassion of Christ

Episode 56: An episode for the Feast of the Sacred Heart. Fr Giacomo shares how he responded at last to the Lord calling him to religious life and how he is now living his faith as a Missionary of the Sacred Heart. 'Our motto is to bring the love of the heart of God into the world, or to be on earth, the heart of God.'  

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Missionaries of the Sacred Heart

Vision Vocation Network

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Transcript

You're listening to All Kinds of Catholic with me, Theresa Alessandro. My conversations with different Catholics will give you glimpses into some of the ways we're living our faith today. Pope Francis used the image of a caravan for our travelling together, on a sometimes chaotic journey. And Pope Leo, quoting Saint Augustine, reminds us, 'Let us live well and the times will be good. We are the times.' I hope you'll feel encouraged and affirmed, and maybe challenged now and then. I am too in these conversations. And if you're enjoying them, it helps if you rate and review on the platform where you're listening. Thank you. 

Just before we get into this week's conversation, listeners, I wanted to thank you for the feedback that's been coming in about recent episodes. One person wrote this on a podcast platform: It's comforting and inspiring to listen to conversations with other members of the church family. Conversations I've never been brave enough to have. Thanks very much to that listener. Maybe listening to these conversations helps all of us find ways to put into words things that are deep within us and maybe start a dialogue where it's difficult.

Listeners, thank you so much for joining the podcast today. We're close to the Feast of the Sacred Heart now, and so I'm really delighted to welcome, as a guest today, somebody who is a member of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart. Welcome, Father Giacomo. 

Thank you, Theresa. It's an honour for me to be a guest of this podcast.

Father Giacomo, I mean, I know and many listeners upon hearing your name and your accent will know too that you grew up in Italy. So tell us a bit about what was it like growing up in Italy? I think of Italy as a country that everybody is Catholic, but what was your experience? 

Yeah. Yeah. Still my generation, everybody was Catholic. Probably people refer to that as cultural Catholic, don't they? So, yeah, everybody was going to Mass. Everybody was going to catechism. We would have catechism on a Saturday afternoon.

I was gonna say, what is your memory of those catechism classes? Was it made fun for the children with activities, or was it a kind of book learning? 

No. It was more book learning. Yeah. There was fun, but it wasn't - the fun of the kid wasn't the main concern. It was information. It was good. Maybe reading bible stories made for children to understand. 

So you grew up going to Catechism, surrounded by people who went to Mass. And was your faith important to you when you were a child? Did you enjoy your faith as a child, or was it just something that happened? 

That's a good question. I think I enjoyed going to Mass. I remember going to Mass with my dad and my granddad. They used to sing in the choir in the parish where we were going. So I was joining them even if I was little. It was part of the fun. Then I suppose as growing up, like everybody, Mass becomes boring and something that you have to do. I enjoyed at that time, I started reading at Mass, for example. Never been an altar server. They just sent me there once, and the priest wasn't very impressed, but I didn't know what to do. So it wasn't really my fault. So I said, No. That's enough. 

That's interesting because I’ve sometimes heard people say that people who become priests have been altar servers first very often, but that's not the case for you then? You found a different way, having had a bad experience trying to be an altar server on Day One. 

It's a long, long way and a much different way. But, 

Tell us about that then. What has been your way into being a priest - in a religious order too? Okay. 

So I didn't consider vocation until late, or I didn't take it seriously until I was mature enough, so to speak. I ignored - I say I ignored the vocation of God's calling because there are key moments where I felt attracted by religious life. And being Italian, religious life for me was Franciscan life equals to that. You know? You are surrounded by Francis. I grew up in a Franciscan parish. That's where my parents got married and I was baptised. So a huge attachment to Franciscan people and Franciscan spirituality. But yeah. No. I ignored it. I ignored it completely. So I wanted it in my own way. I studied chemistry, pharmaceutical chemistry, done five years there in my hometown. Then I worked five years for big pharmaceutical company, GlaxoSmithKline. 

The dark side, Father. 

Yes. No comment. But I had to experience it. Yes. I was there for five years in Verona. I was in R & D. It was a beautiful environment in the sense, you know, a lot of young new graduated people working, committed, working hard all day, and it was nice camaraderie. It was nice, but then the company has decided to close the R&D department. So altogether in 2010, we were all made redundant. But I took the option to go away. I wanted to do further study. So I that's the first time in 2010 when I came to England. I went to York to study chemistry, organic chemistry. So I've done postgraduate studies there for three and a half years. And it was there then that I started taking my vocation more seriously. So at that time, it happened around 2012/3 that I was alone in my life. I had no relationship. I started feeling that chemistry wasn't giving me a lot in my life. It was a bit dry, so to speak. It's beautiful. I'm not saying anything against chemistry itself. It's beautiful, and it's a creation of God. And it leads people, if they are honest enough, to God anyway, to look at the smallest part of creation. But, yeah, it wasn't enough for me. What I met, I missed, it was the human contact. You know? There was no interest to go deeper in conversation. I started volunteering. I started going back to Mass. Now I totally ignored it. But for a while, I didn't go to Mass. There, while remaining Catholic, Mass wasn't the main concern of my week. So I went back to confession after a long while, and I asked the priest in York, in Saint George's parish, So what can I do? I feel like I need to do something for people. So he invited me to join the Saint Vincent de Paul, the SVP. Let's say it's the seed of my vocation or at least the watering of the seed that was planted many years ago. And then in the service towards the elderly in particular and the poor.  I started also volunteering in a soup kitchen for recovering addicts and homeless. So that was the steps that I took. After that, I started looking online. I said, Well, I feel called to something more. Let's see what this brings me. I came across this website. It's Vision Vocation Network. I call it as a dating website for those who want to become priests or religious or nuns because you put all the things that you like. If you like wearing a habit or what kind of prayer do you like. If you like apostolic work or monastic life, all that sort of things, living alone or in communities. And it gives you a list of matching possibilities. And one of them was the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart. So I went online. I wasn't too sure at the beginning. I contacted them, and the Vocation Director was very good because contrary to other Vocation Directors, instead of inviting me to the Come and See weekends, he came to see me in York. We had a coffee. We had, you know, it was more interested about me rather than me joining the Order of the Congregation. So I said, Okay. You know, there is something here that is different already, and it is appealing to me. 

That is really interesting, Father, because  - and I'll put a link to that website in the episode notes because people might like to have a look, and maybe somebody will follow-up on that, you know. But it's interesting that you were looking at the Orders online and finding one to contact in a kind of internet world, but actually somebody then - a real person -  came to you and sat with you and talked, and that's what really helped. That is really interesting. That's the Lord working through the way our world is to reach you. 

Yeah. That's true. Yes. And, again, I knew I had a vocation for religious life and not for diocesan life. Well, I wasn't sure about priesthood either. God is calling me for a community life and to be with him, closer to him. And then in the spirituality of the heart, I discovered that which I was needed. You said about God working with our own means, always drawing us to himself. That's the beauty. I use my need of, for love. Something that I didn't say, when I was 16, my parents divorced. So that had a huge impact in my upbringing and the in the way I was relating with people, you know, in that really important years of a person's life was a big blow for me. Only afterwards, only actually in religious life with the time and the help of very wise people, you know, you look back and you see how God is working and how I was damaging myself with a lot of things or relationships, for example. That need, trying to supply for that need of love of being accepted and welcomed in all sorts of different ways that were not healthy and definitely not godly. God used that in the spirituality of the Sacred Heart. I found that the real, what did Jesus say, you know, like, in the gospel of John: Those who are thirsty, who has - Come to me those who are thirsty, and I will give them living water. So that's what I found. And in particular, what was important for me was when I went then after a few months of accompaniment with this priest, Fr Alan Neville, I have to acknowledge him because he had a great impact in my vocation, and he guided me here. He invited me to do a road trip around the communities in Ireland. The aim was, If you want to join, this is what you are going to join. So we are not, I'm not trying to pretend that we are all holy or all was well, or trying to give a picture, you know, an appearance of what religious life is. This is what religious life is. You have lovely men, but also cranky men, elderly men, or they can't be bothered to talk to you or they don't talk to each other. Mostly, they are nice and good and loving, but - and you might also meet somebody who has not been too good to other people, you know, especially to the vulnerable. So this is what you are buying, basically. 

Like a family, really.

Like a family. Exactly. And I felt at home in this community. It's okay. They are broken people. There nothing wrong to say it, but I'm not pretending to be whole. I'm allowing the love of the heart of Christ to make me whole. 

That's lovely. So the religious order also -  I'm interested that it's international, isn't it? You know? Whereas if you'd become a diocesan priest in England and Wales, you'd be pinned to a parish having already come from Italy, to now be using another language. Was that something that was important to you that this is an international community that other people are from other countries too? 

Yes. Well, I done all my studies. I spent eight years in Ireland, so that's already an international community in itself, but mainly Irish. And I felt even more at home for that. You know? Irish culture is probably quite similar to Italian family oriented and so on. But it's very important. For me, it's very important also to have a broader view now in terms of Europe, in terms of the world. Yeah. I didn't join an enclosed monastic order. I joined a missionary order so that, yes, there is this openness, this breath of openness. Seeing how vocations are going in Europe, it's not a secret that they are declining. It's something that we really have to come to terms with, you know, just to come together. We can't just talk anymore about countries, about nationalities. You know, I am Irish. I'm Italian. I'm English. We are Christians. We are here together to work for God, really. 

You mentioned it's a missionary order. So in today's world, working in England, what do you feel your mission is? What is it you're wanting to put across to people? 

The aim of our congregation, our founder, Fr Jules Chevalier, a Frenchman. He also had this idea of mission, not just going abroad, going to the developing countries, but also as a parish mission. So that mission, it's much broader than some people may think. Our motto is to bring the love of the heart of God into the world or to be on earth, the heart of God. And in particular, the love of God is expressed, shown by the heart of Christ, is human and divine. No? There are these two aspects. As a congregation, we focus more on the human aspect, human element of the love of God. So it's to be, to bring the compassion, basically. It's to be compassionate, to be welcoming, to be at the margin, to be nonjudgmental, to show a face of God that maybe certain generations or certain people did not meet yet, did not see yet. You know, maybe an harsh God, a judgmental God, a God who is there to catch us out all the time, policeman God. We are trying to bring a loving God, an image of a God who loves us, who welcomes us, like the prodigal father, the father of the prodigal son. So that nobody feels excluded. It doesn't matter what they’re like. And some parts of the church can be quite excluding in the way they interpret doctrine, which is very important. Don't get me wrong. Probably, we exalt more the pastoral side of being a Christian, a way of opening the church to everybody rather to be the church of the elite. That's my interpretation. 

That will really resonate with listeners. I think it brings it home to people that that's what we're all trying to do, aren't we? We can get a bit sidetracked, but we share that mission, don't we? To share the love of God with others, all of us in the church. I think you've spoken really well about the things that the Order has helped to nourish in you or the hole that has filled in you by becoming part of a religious community. I wonder if there are some challenges still that you are able to share. Some things that make it, make you have to work harder to keep going with your faith and your part in the community. 

Yes. Community life is not easy sometimes. I am blessed here because it's a very small community. There's only two of us. And, I am blessed because Fr Dave is a great mentor, a great example, very patient, hardworking, too hardworking. But in other communities where I've been, the larger they are, the more difficult is to have a good relationship, for example. And every community is different. You mentioned community is like family, and that is true. And the other thing that is difficult is having very few companions, confreres, members that are closer to my age. Those who are, are working hard all over the world, so we have very little contact. So that's one of the struggles within a community. Thank God there is a network of religious, especially in Ireland, that is gathering often. We are, we used to meet at least twice a year for a conference or for a barbecue or for whatever to support each other because I was on my own for a while with a Spanish - with the two of us. Thank God. Yes. In Dublin. But there were orders that they had only one vocation or maybe two. So coming together, knowing that we were not alone. 

Because you're part of a religious order that's international, does that mean that at times you may be sent to a different part of the world unexpectedly or at short notice or even with some notice that you need to be prepared to be following the Lord into different countries and different places? 

Yes. The short answer is yes. That could happen. I heard the stories of men from Ireland or England being sent in within a few months. We have missions in Venezuela, South Africa - because there was a need. That's a great example of generosity that I take from those who've gone before me. It could happen, but what we have been told, it’s not military obedience. So it's not so, Giacomo, you have to go tomorrow to Venezuela, to Sudan. There will be a conversation, a discernment, a communal discernment between me and the Order or the Province. To say that, I spent three months of my early priesthood just after I was ordained. I was sent to the Fiji Islands to experience the mission and the younger province with much younger members. They are flourishing. They have vocations, you know, not only to priesthood, also to brotherhood. That was a  great experience, very challenging and difficult, but it was nice. Very forming, if I can say that in English. I wasn't spending time on the beaches. 

No. Of course.

Just in case. You got comments, if I mentioned I was in Fiji, Oh, a beautiful place. Yeah. Yeah. It is beautiful. If you go down to the beach, I suppose, it's beautiful. 

But that's not where the church is working necessarily, is it? 

No. Not necessarily. Even if I have to say the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, they have a lovely parish, which is literally three metres from the Pacific Ocean. It's on the beach, and the church is on the beach. That's not where I was posted. It was maybe an hour and a half drive from where I was. So we had a few meetings there. It was really, really lovely. Yeah. You could hear the waves. You know, you can pray. There was a grotto, and you were facing the ocean. It is pretty special. 

Yeah. I bet. I think what you said there is right, though, isn't it? That because of spending some time in discernment - of course, everybody in the Order is trying to respond to the Lord. And so the people who are being sent to places, they're being called there by the Lord, hopefully, if everybody's spending some time in prayer and discernment. And sometimes we make mistakes, don't we? In what we think the Lord is saying. But overall, there's no need to fear that you might be sent somewhere where it's just miserable. Although it might be hard, it will be, like you say, forming. It will be good for you. You will be able to live life to the full. That's what we can hope for out of God's love for us. 

Yes. What I found, for example, that it's the welcoming and the love of the people, which I never found anywhere else. I didn't travel a lot, it’s true. They say they are the most peaceful people in the world, people from Fiji. It is true. Friendly. You become friends in two seconds with them. Really, really welcoming and hardworking. Helpful in the parish, really, and very, very strong Christians. Something that here is gone, you know, because of our being a bit cultural Catholic. Yeah. We go through the motions sometimes. There you have families that were telling me they maybe waking up at four to go and work in the plantation, and the whole family would wake up at four to pray the rosary the first thing in the morning. No. There are very good families here in England as well, I have to say. 

But when you see a community that isn't just going through the motions of something that's been handed down, that people don't necessarily understand very well, I think you can see the difference, can't you? People who are absolutely experiencing the gospel in a very fresh way and committed to it. 

They lived it. They owned the parish. They weren't just coming for the Sunday Mass or for the weekday Mass. The churches in the missions is organised in small Christian communities. So each community has a leader, has a catechist, somebody who prepares for the sacraments, and they then they take charge on a rota for the liturgy or Sunday liturgy, the cleaning of the church, formation of children, formation of couples for wedding. So it's, you know, something that we are trying to bring in the church here, especially in England with all this synodality Pope Francis has started. They are living it without knowing. That's what the church is about. And then so we have a lot to learn from these communities. 

And I think it's good for us to hear that in other parts of the world. We think we're at the forefront, but, actually people in Fiji already knew what synodality was, and they were already doing it.

And I'm sure it happens in a lot of other missions, in South America or in Africa, Asia. 

So there's one more thing then, Father, before we finish talking today, and that is about whether there's a piece of scripture that really means something to you. Is there something that immediately comes into your mind?

 Well, the first thing that comes to mind is Matthew chapter 25, what is called the universal judgment. At least in Italian, universale giudizio,  And I say that because that's what was one of the first seeds that the Lord planted in my heart for my conversion. I remember I was in a parish in Verona where I was working. And hearing that: I was in prison, you visited me. I was hungry, you fed me. I was thirsty - And I said, I'm not doing that. I'm not doing that. I'm not living the gospel. I have to do something more. At that time, I couldn't do much. I was working too much, probably, but there wasn't any group that I could join in that parish in particular. But that’s how the Lord worked, and that impacted me the rest of my life. You know what I mean? You know, so that sense of commitment, it’s not enough to hear it. We have to put it into practice. And that connects with the love of God. It's loving Christ in those who are in need. Before I joined religious life, while I was still discerning, because I'm a scientist, I decided I need to try if this thing of working with people, helping people, really works for me. So I found a job as a support worker or enabler for people with disabilities, and it was very, very hard, but I loved it. Probably the nicest, best job I've ever done. The connection you create with these people, it's amazing. And there was a special man. He had Down syndrome with severe autism. So he was totally dependent on somebody else for all his life, you know, from personal care to feeding. And I really struggled. And at the beginning, I was almost fearful, afraid, to be with him because sometimes you don't understand, you know, behaviours. He couldn't verbalise anything, so he would talk it up with his hands or, you know, with his body or - and I really struggled to see Jesus present in him. So I don't know. Every morning, I was waking up. I said, Jesus help me to recognise you in the face of the people I serve. And it took, I don't know how many weeks or months. And one day, it just happened. I remember I was feeding him. I was looking at him, and I just fell in love in inverted commas. Really, I could see the grace in this person. I could see God present there, and that changed everything. Judging from appearances to going deeper, you know, what Jesus is telling us in the gospel, Go deeper. Don't just look at what people look like and train that connection at the heart level. So go from the head to the heart. The journey from the head, from the rational side, to the emotional side and be connected at that level. And that's what changed my life. And then other passages of scriptures helped me to understand that I was loved by God. The famous Psalm 139, Lord, you search me and you know me. You know, you knit me together in my mother's womb. I said, Woah. That's amazing. And then the whole gospel of John, the woman at the well, prayer of Jesus at the end, I pray also for these, that may all be one. Come to me. Come to me all who are broken-hearted, and I will give you rest. All these passages, they bring life. They remind us of the closeness of God, especially in our vulnerability, not to be afraid. For me, it was that accepting that I was broken and that God was the one doing the mend, the healing of God coming from his own broken heart that pierced heart of Christ on the cross. So if I'm able to accept that, to sit there at the bottom of the cross and allowing that love to shower me, the blood and water that flowed from his heart, then I think I'm in a good place. And as a Missionary of that Sacred Heart, I'm called to bring that to people. So especially to those who are broken and don't feel loved or welcomed. 

Gosh, Father Giacomo. This is such a lovely episode for the week when we have the Feast of the Sacred Heart. It's been wonderful spending this time with you today. And I'm someone who operates from the heart too, so it really speaks to me to hear you speak in this way of the love of God, the heart of God. I'm really struck by how it is service that brought you closer to fulfilling your vocation at last, and the courage that it took to step away from being a fancy scientist to serving people who are at first difficult to care for and be with. It's just wonderful to have heard those testimonies from you today. So thank you so much for spending some time being part of the podcast. 

Thank you. It's been an honour. 

Thanks so much for joining me on All Kinds of Catholic this time. I hope today's conversation has resonated with you. A new episode is released each Wednesday. Follow All Kinds of Catholic on the usual podcast platforms. Rate and review to help others find it. And follow our X/Twitter, and Facebook accounts, @kindsofCatholic. 

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