Dear Family and Friends, Christmas Update 2008
On September 4th 2008, I officially began the novitiate year with the Fraternita di San Carlo –a priestly Fraternity that began in the mid 80’s through the experience of a group of diocesan priests who were living together and following the life of the ecclesial movement Communion and Liberation.
Don Massimo Camisasca is recognized as the founder of the community, and he was one of Msgr. Luigi Giussani’s first students at Berchet High School in the late 50’s, where the CL movement first originated. The Priestly Fraternity exists to bring the experience of the CL movement to the world, and the name Charles Borromeo was chosen because he was a great reformer of the Church following the Council of Trent, and from the close connection to Milan, where he was Bishop and Cardinal. The founder was ordained on his Feast date (Nov. 4), and grew up with a special devotion to this great saint.
The Fraternity has over 100 priests, and over 30 seminarians, mostly from Italy but others from Brazil, Chile, Mexico, USA, Canada, Germany, Spain and other European countries. We are all here to deepen and bear witness to the encounter and friendship we have met through following the CL movement. The Fraternity has houses in over 15 countries, including three in USA, one in Canada, Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Russia, Siberia, information can be found on their website www. sancarlo.org , make sure to click on the British flag for English.
I first met the CL movement while studying at St. FX, when the responsible for Canada was invited to visit the campus and meet with the Catholic students. At the time, I was not interested in getting involved. However, upon attending the John Paul II Institute in Washington, DC where the CL movement was more established I was invited to attend the weekly School of Community (an hour of catechesis reading a text of Giussani, or the Holy Father). It is here where the initial seed planted grew and took form, and a great flourishing of friendship and growth in my understanding of the Church, of Jesus Christ and what he reveals about the nature of man. Through the concreteness of the common life together, the incarnational nature of Christianity became a lived experience. After a couple of years of following the CL movement, I decided to come to Rome and check out the possibility of becoming a missionary priest.
Some of the highlights thus far have been attending the Rimini Meeting in August –I witnessed the grandeur of the CL movement and the cultural impact that the education the movement proposes; Hiking in the Mountains –back in October a group of the first year novitiates went hiking and celebrated Mass on top of the mountain which was great, and very JPII-ish; A Meeting with Fr. Julian Carron, who is the head of the CL movement -he came to our house to meet with the diocesan priests of Rome who follow the life of the movement and met with the seminarians and shared his experience of the recent Synod on the Word of God; Studying at the Pontifical Lateran University –every morning the seminarians get into large vans and make the forty-five minute commute into the city together, upon arrival we pray morning prayer at the Lateran Basilica, I was elected class representative for the philosophy students; Planting Trees –we live in a miniature Garden of Eden, a couple of weeks ago, we planted over 115 trees, 60 olive trees and 55 fruit trees, we are hoping to make a Way of the Cross with a canopy of olive trees. I am also the responsible for gathering the fruit from our trees, I have picked apples, figs, mandarins, lemons, and a couple other types of fruit. My dad teases me and says that I am really secretly in Rome getting an agriculture degree; Meeting with Marcus and Cleuza, the responsibles for the Landless Workers movement in Brazil, a group of over 50, 000 that entered CL in January, they came to the house on Sunday and later we toured the city together, it was a lot of fun and I got to know more about their life; The Common Life, we live a type of monastic culture at the house, lots of prayer and silence, ‘In Silence Sings the Mystery’, I feel as though I have been given a new heart and new eyes by which to view my life and history, this is the grandeur of the proposal of the CL movement, and I am enjoying it very much, it is great to learn to ask Christ to make himself present in all that we live, a continual Advent, a waiting and asking for Christ to make himself present, Maranatha, Come Lord Jesus, as the Spouse waits and cries out for the Bridegroom in the Book of Revelation.
I am very grateful that God has brought you into my life, you are all a light and sign of His presence for me. Have a Blessed Christmas and Holiday Season,
For those who would like to write, and I promise to respond:
Fraternita San Carlo,
C/O John Roderick
761 Via Boccea
Roma, Italia
00166
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