My personal and humble letter to God

Hello dear God, I write to you this humble and personal letter of mine as only I know how to do: with my heart.

I hope you accept it as it is, with its imperfections, with its mistakes, with its sins, with the weaknesses of the human being, just as you yourself wanted. To be then forgiven by you, straightened, redacted with your infinite and merciful sweetness, of father.

On my 57th birthday I thank you for all that you have given me: joys and pains, health and illness, but above all I thank you for giving me fatherhood, at the right time, at the right time, just when you were certain that you could accept this grace of yours.

I understood it, I understood it, I accepted it, with infinite joy, with meekness, with the humility that distinguishes me.

He was male, he was handsome, he was healthy. I kept thanking you, in all languages, in every way a human being can do.

Here’s the second prize: my bride and I were trembling about the outcome of the ultrasound. Female.

Oh, good Lord: you have looked with tender eyes at this child of yours who, though a sinful one, you have flooded with your grace. Oh good God, I can’t find words and gestures to praise you and thank you.

The grace of the Lord has pervaded my house, and has made us a solid table on which every day we served our Eucharist to the children and to us parents chosen in later life. But nothing is impossible to God.

When our ship sailed in the quiet sea of earthly everyday life, here is the storm, the storm, the rough sea of water that in a blink of eyes sucked us into a vortex that we did not know, we did not even know that it existed.

Hospital, tumor, surgical operations, chemotherapy, a bevy of children, even newborns, hooked to hope through a cannula tucked into the arm, still too small to accept a thin and pungent needle.

And in their smiles, in the constant smile of Eugene, I saw your face, the face sprinkled with your son’s blood as he arrives at the scaffold wanted by his brother, I also saw your helplessness and suffering in the face of human horrors and errors.

And at the same time that the rain showed your fragility and your crying, I realized that you were waiting with open arms for your children, all your children, that you had chosen to be close to you, like a father who bickers a caress of affection from his son, a kiss of farewell from his beloved.

This is the poetry of life, this is the sea in which we sail.

Tight, united to each other, ready to face the storm when it catches us unprepared, never distant in order not to suffer the cold of death, to love each other as God himself loves us, always and anyway, unconditionally.

Dear good God, you get many requests, so many recommendations, so many reminders that you can not even hurry: but in a free moment listen to this little lament of mine, of joy and pain, and gratitude.

Through my son Eugene, our son Eugene, you taught me silence. From his last birthday on August 29, 2020 for the two months that separated him from you, he always listened to your voice; every now and then in his blissful and sweet sleep I saw him move his lips, talking to the air, the last air you gave him, waiting for the spring that was waiting for him shortly after.

He taught me gratitude: in our evening prayers Eugenio thanked the Madonna for giving him another day, and begged her to give joy and serenity to all the children, the other children. He thought first of the others, then of himself. It was not “normal” that a 14-year-old was so selfless, but in this speech there were the musical notes of your voice.

And all this has meant that today, with my white beard where every hair tells a story, I am to ask you, humbly, to forgive me once again and grant me the grace to see in the eyes and in the smile of Francesca the look towards the eternal light that already belongs to Eugenio.

Let yours be made, not mine, will.

With love, your Remigio